Thanksgiving
by Paul Grimsley
It’s interesting to have a holiday which you are taking part in that has such a long history, but whose history you are not personally invested in.
A lot of holidays get all the weight of the past stacked heavy upon them, and they are a time where you put all the explosive elements of your family in one room and you shake them up and step back. Family holidays are a double-edged sword for a lot of people.
Christmas gets locked up in the demand of presents.
Halloween can be a sugar-filled kid sponsored nightmare if you don’t police the candy.
4th of July maybe stresses the pets.
Politics swim around holidays like sharks in the water waiting for the first sign of blood.
But step back from that and look what all of them are really about — they are about survival, notice food is central to most of them. They are about emerging out of darkness into the light — fireworks are also very present. Even Halloween is about working an alchemy on evil spirits and making them tame, while getting rewarded with food for doing so. They are about family — and that is the unit that most often aids in that survival. For me things feel very vital at these times of the year — you can get a little perspective and look around and see that you really love the people around you; that you aren’t doing so bad; and that you do deserve to be rewarded for your hard work.
Even after 10 years Thanksgiving is a pleasant novelty. As are all the other holidays. I enjoy how much effort goes into the celebration.
Good old Abe Lincoln set the date for the last Thursday of November, back in 1863, after Sarah Josepha Hale, author of Mary Had A Little Lamb, campaigned for the institution of a national holiday. I was celebrated before, on various dates in various states
