Thanksgiving experiences

It’s been 13 years since my son and I celebrated Thanksgiving.  I’ve written in the past about being away on the holiday, more than once in fact, but I think the strangest experience of all was being back.

The last Thanksgiving I spent in America was celebrated at my mother’s house, as we had all the Thanksgivings I’d celebrated before that.  When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a “fancy” holiday–Mom pulled out the good china, silver and crystal.  We had the white tablecloth, the candles; we dressed for dinner.  This was the formality of my youth.  At that last celebration, there were two grandchildren, the three children, one fiancee and Mom.

This year we had Thanksgiving at my brother and sister-in-law’s (the former fiancee), who have been the holiday hosts since I’ve been gone.  Mom was down at her place in Tennessee, the eldest grandchild was up at college and there were three new grandchildren.  The dinner was delicious and traditional, the table lovely if more casual than my mother’s taste, but it didn’t feel like a holiday to me and definitely not to my son.  This is no reflection on my brother and sister-in-law.  It’s a reflection on my son and me.

My son was three at the last Thanksgiving he celebrated.  He is clueless about the whole thing, but visiting family is always a good thing.  For me, I wondered, what happened to me?  Why don’t I care about the holiday?  Maybe because it seems so different?  Driving down to my brother’s we made some pit stops, and no one was dressed up.  I was in a work outfit, but my son was in jeans and a tee shirt.  The majority of people traveling were in jeans, sweats, even pajamas!  In my mind, holidays should mean uncomfortable clothes–pantyhose at the very least!  Kind of twisted, I know, but I still associate holidays with scratchy, tight, fussy and unpleasant clothing.

Was that it?

I wasn’t with my mom, so this is the first Thanksgiving that I’ve celebrated without Mom.  I didn’t celebrate abroad.  But no, that’s not it.

It’s not that I don’t care about the entire concept.  I do care, very much.

So I’m forcing myself to think about this, and I think the problem is the same problem I’ve seen since I’ve been back.  Commercialization.  Buy, buy, buy.  Eat a big meal, but then the focus shifts to Friday–Black Friday, the official start of the Christmas shopping season.  It was like this before I left, of course, but it seems worse now.  It just could be that I notice it more after being gone so long, but most people I talk to feel that things are getting more and more commercial every year.

Our Puritan forefathers and mothers would be horrified.  Lincoln, who called for a national day of Thanksgiving during the Civil War, would be stupified.  Even FDR, who set the fourth Thursday of November as our national day of Thanksgiving in 1939, would look askance at what has happened to our spirit of thankfulness.

Of course I’m grateful for all of my blessings, and I was happy to be with family, but the specialness was gone.

Black Friday is also called “Buy Nothing Day” to counter the rise in materialism and commercialism, but this year I didn’t hear a peep from the organizers.  It’s an international movement, not just in the US, but still, didn’t see anything about it till I googled it just now.

WOW!  Off the track, but you know one of the reasons why I didn’t hear anything.  Found this on adbusters.org “MTV, the channel that markets itself to hip youth, has decreed that our Buy Nothing Day public service spot ‘goes further than we are willing to accept on our channels’. Gangsta rap and sexualized, semi-naked school girls are okay, but apparently not a burping pig talking about consumption?”

Well, that was shocking.  I watched the ad and it was a big nothing in terms of shock value.  But I can see MTV’s point.  If you’re advertising demographic is youth, with it’s large disposable income spent on largely unnecessary objects, you don’t want to be annoying the big account advertisers, do you?

So, there it is, the first Thanksgiving back in the States.  Hard emotions to articulate, but very agitating on some levels.

Visceral beauty

I was driving through the back roads of Massachusetts a while ago thinking how lucky I was to be in New England in the autumn.  I have lived in and visited many of the world’s most beautiful places–walked in the Alps, seen the green fields of Ireland, eyed the terrible beauty of the North Atlantic in England and the still calm of the Pacific beaches in Asia.  But none of it stirs me like the red and gold beauty of the Northeast in autumn.

 I felt a tug in my guts–a physical manifestation of a love that I don’t feel for anywhere else.  And it got me to thinking.  Is there really something to this “fatherland” thing?  Are there really roots or ties I have to here that I don’t have for anywhere else?  Why do I love this place as I love no other?

These thoughts scare me.  I like to think of my self as a citizen of the world.  I like to think that I haven’t harmed my child by giving him an international existence and a physically rootless sense of “home”.  But then I think, perhaps I’m wrong.

I remember the first time I came back for autumn in New York.  I had been away for five years at that point, but my cousin was getting married in October, so I came home.  She had her reception at Bear Mountain State Park, in the mountains on the banks of the Hudson.  I remember walking through the woods thinking that the air itself was infused with color, heavier than normal air as it had different properties.  I could breathe the oranges, reds and golds and they filled my body with their power and warmth.  A mystical moment I remember to this day.  When I left, I was full of longing and homesickness for a place for the first time ever.

And from that time on, I remembered what I was missing.  One of the joys for me this year is being in a place where it all looks so familiar.  Yes, New York and New England are different places, but Nature knows no boundaries.  The Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley aren’t that different from other river valleys in New England, and here I live around the Nashua River. 

It’s taken me a while to get to this point, but I can unabashedly say I love this place.  It is in my being and in my fiber, and this is the earth from which I come.  This is a source of my strength. 

And this is a type of homesickness that books and people don’t often talk about.  People can understand us missing people, food, festivals, even shops, but the Earth?  The mountains?  The rivers?  I had beautiful mountains in Taiwan.  In Switzerland I had the Alps for goodness sake! 

I have indelible memories of drinking in the peace and beauty of mountains around the world.  The New Year’s eve spent with a dear friend, sitting on the side of Yamingshan, gaining strength for the coming year. 

The feeling of insignificance and transience I felt walking through glacial ice to the top of Jungfrau filled me with a sense of awe of God that I hold in me still.

But none of these beauties compare with the sense of belonging and calm I gain while gazing at New York’s Adirondacks.

I have no answer.  I have very little of a point.  I think the only point I have is that this feeling of physically being a part of the land bothers me.  I don’t know that this is a good thing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about loving my country lately.  I do love it.  Now, what do I do with that love?  How is this love going to manifest itself?  What does it mean if everyone feels this as well?

All questions for another day.