Guilt-free Gratitude

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So why do the stores skip directly from Halloween to Christmas? Summer ends and school begins. Big sales on garden furniture make room for backpacks and crayons.

Lookout here comes HALLOWEEN: orange string lights, scary skeletons, costumes and candy candy candy.... Watch OUT here comes XMAS!!!!! Trees and decorations and wrap and ribbons and ornaments and tinsel and music and cards and more and more and more and --

Where did Thanksgiving go?

In Ye Olden Tymes, ye schoolchildren would dutifully bend colored pipe cleaners and cut out ye old construction paper pumpkins, turkeys and xmas trees .... each to its time, its season, its moment on a calendar driven more by seasons and customs, than by merchandising.

Why skip directly from Halloween to Christmas? Why put out some paltry orange candles, cloth turkeys and fall leaf paper plates, already on deep discount before Thanksgiving has even arrived?

Well duh. Thanksgiving is about being grateful for what we have. For family and friends, good health and warmth in cooling weather, good food in good company. Time to give thanks, to stop and consider our fortunes and blessings, such as they are and make the most of them. Time to count our blessings and consider those less fortunate. Time to reflect on the turning of the seasons, of the year, of life.

Where are the marketing, merchandising, megalomarting opportunities in ALL THAT?

What, shopping for groceries? BOring. Fall colored leftovers from Halloween? PUHleeze. GRATITUDE? For what we HAVE? Touchy feely, lovey dovey, people in our lives schmaltz and WHERE IS THE LUST? Where is the lust for the Next Big Thing, except for Our Team winning and the prospect of Black Friday SPENDATHONS!!!?! XMAS IS ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We don't have to try to make each other feel guilty about eating meat or favoring the wrong color meat or type of stuffing or sports team or exploitive ancestry all piling one on top another like a stupid football pileup, where the nameless faceless padded figures step back to reveal a simple truth: we are all Americans now.

We don't have to feel guilty about whether our Asian or Scandinavian ancestors came over on big boats and planted their feet on a big rock even before Columbus or whether our same lineage came later on and built the transcontinental railroad or farmed the rich soil. Or whether in between those visitations, European religious refugees landed in Jamestown or Plymouth and established the in/famous traditions that come down to us today. Or whether we were brought in the holds of ships like cargo, property and property owners all dehumanized and branded by the slave trade ...

We can wonder at the resilience and honor of the various waves of immigrants and of the indigenous peoples of this nation; at the zen like dignity and courage of those whose population and way of life were shot at out of the open cars of that transcontinental railroad; the persistence of the people from the south who have been here before and during and after; the outposts from the far north that dot the western coast; the multi-tendrilled interconnectivity of all our ancestors who have crossed oceans and crossed continents and crossed paths to bring us to where this nation is today.

We can take a moment and be grateful, think of our loved ones, think of others less fortunate; reflect on thanksgiving, before being yanked back into the cynical spendfest that has its grip on the heart and soul of the nation our ancestors all fought and loved and worked to provide us.

[NYC_SKP]

1. I'm going to be thankful for Thanksgiving. It's not even December...Xmas can wait.

Great post, K and R.

And, damn, that Santa Maria is just a cork in the ocean compared to Zheng He's craft!

:kick:

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2. LOL

:hi: the Chinese may have come the Pacific route .... :think:

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3. Okay, that was it. Happy Thanksgiving All!

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8. .

[hfojvt]

4. When I was younger, I used to be more unhappy.

Thanksgiving really got on my nerves. Thankful? What the heck was I supposed to be thankful for? My non-existent job? My crap job? My non-existent friends and love life? My decaying teeth? The lousy Wisconsin weather? My leaking roofs? The spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes (what the heck is that supposed to mean anyway?) Back then, there was no gravity - the earth just sucked.

I loved that passage on page 184 of Catch 22 where Yossarian declares "I bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for."

Then I let Mitzi into my heart, or actually she nosed her way in and bounced and wagged until my heart grew three sizes that day, and I decided not to throw the presents and food off the side of Mount Crumpet, but instead took them back to my cave where I had a glorious feast and played with some cool toys (did you know that Norbert Who got a playstation two that year? (or he would have :o). The funnest part though, was smashing all of the decorations. True, that created lots of broken glass, but I got a friend to bring over his moss covered three handled family gradenza to clean things up.

At least that's how I remember it, but I may have watched too much Dr. Seuss.

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5. Hope all is well in Hfojvt Ville

Happy Holidays :spray:

[hfojvt]

6. it probably helps being in Kansas

where we get about ten times as much sunshine as the land of eternal scud (otherwise known as Wisconsin/Minnesota). To quote from Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" - "Mine sun!!"

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7. Ursula K. LeGuin

Something to be thankful for!

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9. and Madeleine L'Engle