Next week, Americans will mark Thanksgiving by gathering around dining room tables to feast on turkey, gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. To celebrate the power of communal meals to bring people together around the world, our editors dug into the National Geographic archives for pictures of feasts from all parts of the globe. (Read more about Thanksgiving.)

The photo above, from 1930s Hungary, shows one woman straightening a decoration on the wall while others laugh and chat over dishes of duck and corn.—By Becky Little, photo gallery by Jessie Wender