I've just been thinking about November.
Full disclosure: I've been sick in bed all day. Suffice it to say I've been pondering a lot of things and not all of them coherent. Anyhoo, blogging is about all I can bring myself to do, so, on with November. . . .
Why is it that we celebrate the season of gratitude during the second darkest month of the year? I find this unnecessary. I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm sure there is. But a November cold is all it takes to get me questioning the placement of holidays.
Perhaps the act of practicing a gratitude ritual in the dark is supposed to somehow be more authentic. I mean, anybody can be grateful in the bursting buds of May and June, right? Perhaps Real Gratitude lives in the dark, irrelevant to circumstance.
Tell that to the turkey.
3 comments:
Lori:
Get well soon! Drink lots of tea and get some chicken soup.
Thanksgiving started as a harvest festival, but why it was set in a month where most of the good fruits and veggies in the market have been imported from far away, is beyond me.
Take care of yourself.
Ann
Um, because the Pilgrims had been delayed by bad weather in the Atlantic, and that's when they got here? No, that's not right, the date for Thanksgiving was set by Congress sometime early in the 20th century.
You know that Christmas was a take-over of a Roman festival, right? I'm sure that the Sun was being celebrated in a season when it was scarce, simply to remind people that it would come back, and to create cheer in the darkness. Maybe that's why those wacky Germans put candles on their trees - they needed the uplift.
Yeah, I know most of this is real arbitrary timing, and really, now that I don't have a fever, it makes sense to have something to celebrate in the dark. There is so very little else to do. And that brings us to why most babies are born in September. . . .
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