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“It is deep within our hearts that we have to do this.” Such words reflect the potency of subjective and social meaning of food occupations for older Thai women at Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year. This paper presents the Thai findings from a multi‐site research project exploring older women's experiences of food occupations at Songkran in Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Christmas in Auckland, New Zealand, and Kentucky, USA. Narrative data for this study were collected through focus group interviews with 33 Thai women aged 60 years or over as the women talked about planning, preparing, and offering food at Songkran. The women's stories reveal the centrality of carrying on ritualistic food traditions in Chiang Mai society. They must know and follow the ancient ways and recipes taught by mothers and grandmothers as they prepare themselves and the foods for going to the temple where they offer food to the …