THANKSGIVING

Gobble -Gobble day is coming again. The same time every year we are told to cook a king's feast and invite people over to dine who you may or may have not spoken to in about a year. I am talking about Thanksgiving. The day we are supposed to remember how the settlers came to a new place and almost starved to death and the natives helped them to survive.

The holiday known as the first feast is for the harvest in autumn.  The Pilgrims celebrated a first successful harvest. The Plymouth Colony was English Protestants. The Wampanoag Native Americans were at this first harvest. It is the Wampanoag custom to give thanks for the harvest each year. [www.plimoth.org]

In the Bible it talks about harvest: Celebrate the Harvest Festival each spring when you start harvesting your wheat, and celebrate the Festival of Shelters each autumn when you pick your fruit. To my understanding one has to plant for a harvest. To sow, so one can reap a harvest. If I walk over my property year in and year out and do nothing to it, why should I expect any harvest? This is why we [collective humans] used to celebrate this time of the year for the harvest and give thanks.

In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln declared two national holidays. There was one in August to commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg and one on November to give thanks for “general blessings”. The Wampanoag did not share this reverence for long and thought a great betrayal and bloodshed.

Which brings me here today; the commercialization of Thanksgiving today has nothing to do with any harvest. The Black Friday phenomenon is a beast of magnums proportion. The fact that the retail market wants you to skip your dessert from your holiday dinner and head out for unbelievable, over priced merchandise to fool you that you can save is outrageous. Then there is a new crazy called “Cyber-Monday” shopping online [at work].

  My fellow Americans, newly-immigrated Americans learned to celebrate this holiday with their own take of something to be thankful for. I’m sure each family story is unique in its own way, but thankful just the same and not necessarily a turkey in the middle of the table. [maybe at the head of the table].

Let us not lose sight of what one is thankful for. I am thankful for my family, blood relations or just good friends. I am thankful my health.  As a breast cancer survivor, everyday above ground is a good day. I am thankful for the United States of America, the land of the free, home of the brave. We have our flaws and many we have, but life is a work in progress. When you learn more, you do more.

I will be volunteering somewhere. My children are grown and are creating holiday traditions for themselves. I am thankful for this.

Happy Thanksgiving

…Pandora