Our Thanksgiving

For the first time in a very long time, I cooked the entire Thanksgiving feast myself, and we stayed at home. We had turkey, gravy, dressing (stuffing), cranberry sauce, green beans, corn, collard greens, congealed salad, sweet potato souffle, cherry pie, and oatmeal cookies. I was a little worried I had forgotten what to cook and was out of practice, but it turned out just fine. Thomas helped a lot ahead of time and even said the blessing! Now for the first time ever, we might even go get our Christmas tree this week. Either I am over my culture shock or I have caved to the pressures of American consumerism.

Thanksgiving Already Creeping Away

I should have known something was up when I walked into Wal-Mart the day before Halloween and had to veer around the huge Christmas tree the employees were putting up. There was Halloween candy on the shelves to the left and right of the tree, and the Halloween aisle, well, half of the Halloween aisle(this would be about one tram long) was still overflowing with jack-o-lanterns and hundreds of costumes. Did everybody go for the homemade costumes this year? Is poor costume sales some reliable indicator about consumer faith in the economy? But I digress. The other half of the aisle was already filled with Christmas candy. Red and green, orange and black and purple. It makes me cringe to think about it.
So, today, I went in search of a little something, well, with a turkey or a horn of plenty on it---a tea towel or fingertip towel or a dish sponge to send to a friend. About half of the Halloween stuff is still there, and there didn't seem to be any more Christmas decorations up, at least. But there was no sign of Thanksgiving! No turkey dish towels, no horns of plenty centerpieces, no turkey cups or napkins or paper plates, not even a turkey platter. I have kind of gotten used to those tacky platters as harbingers of the feast. (I even own one and like it LOL)
If stores begin Halloween in August (so much for fresh candy), and Christmas at Halloween, and then just skip Thanksgiving, what is that? Not holiday creep. Holiday leap? Holiday warp? Whatever it is, I really ought to just hush since I am always kvetching about the over-commercialism of holidays. It's just that it would have been nice to have seen at least a cardboard turkey or a couple of pilgrims or indians with feathers or something like that stuck around. Thanksgiving is still a week away.

White Horse in the River

One or two or three times a week, I drive a bit under twenty kilometers to Pacolet, SC, where I spend time with the folks at the Pacolet Senior Center. I always have a pleasant time there, talking to the seniors, listening to them, playing games or doing little artsy projects that I bring. I am happy for the company, and unlike so many of my friends these days, they aren't too busy or sick of me yet to not enjoy mine. On Thursday, I was encouraged to follow one of them down the road a little ways to see some Christmas decorations for sale that a local millionaire dying of cancer donated to her church. The decorations were the kind of high-end stuff that's available in malls, and they were quite nice, but the real treat for me was not in being offered a chance to preview what was to be sold last Saturday and to choose some things first, but in getting to see Pacolet Mills. It is a stunningly beautiful old mill town. In addition to a large variety of well-cared-for mill houses on gently curving streets, there's this white horse on a pylon in the middle of the river and a riverside amphitheatre to rival ones I know in Verona and Rome. Because it was raining, I didn't walk down to take a good photo of the amphitheatre or of the houses, but I hope to soon have some to share with you.

Free on Election Day

Of course, we're free; it's America! And we aren't all that was free today. We got free coffee from Starbucks, a free waffle (the Belgian type, not those nifty wafer-like ones you can get from Czech spas)from Waffle House, a free doughnut from Krispy Kreme (I'm sorry I can't explain Krispy Kreme donuts to you, but when you visit, I'll buy you some-I promise), and my favorite, a free chicken sandwich from
Chic-Fil-A. We aren't interested in any kind of government handouts, but hey, we would be fools not to take handouts from big business. After a busy day of chasing down the freebies, we are watching the election returns. Because of Thomas's tremendous election excitment, I have been saved from having to cook, and we are feasting on junk food for dinner. I am even being treated to a bottle of my favorite Yellow Tail red wine. It ain't Christmas, but it's damned close. If Obama wins, it will be like Santa came early. And if not, I am going to need more wine, lots and lots more wine.

Happy Hallow-GREEN?

This year, the usual things happened for Halloween: Wal-Mart and the other merchants put out the Halloween decorations and candy some time around Labor Day, a full two months before October 31st. There was, once again, enough Halloween candy, decorations, and costumes to fill at least two trams, plus even more Halloween underwear, this time for men and women, than last year (though I still gave the thongs a miss). Not everything is about the same. For one thing, for the first time in more than twenty years, I didn't carve a jack-o-lantern for Halloween, and putting a small wreath on the door and an electric artificial jack-o-lantern in the window was the extent of my decorating.
Bram was as amenable as ever about having a homemade costume, and this year we made it completely with recyclables and things left over from previous years' costumes. He really wanted his costume to make a statement about the environment, so he went as the endangered American Crocodile. We used some of the fabric I bought at Goodwill nine(!) years ago, cardboard from the box his trampoline came in, leftover paint, duck tape from 9/11. For the eyes we used earplugs we got from one of the airlines.
Bram's school has embraced "Going Green" with such enthusiasm that they had every student and teacher make costumes from recyclables and items that were headed for the landfill. On Friday, they staged a New Orleans style parade around the quarter-mile running track. It was the first Halloween Parade I had ever heard of. It was cute, and it reminded me how much Halloween has changed since I was a child. Halloween used to be only about dressing up and going door to door to get candy. Sometimes there was a Halloween Carnival, though we rarely went. (Remember: for us, it was all about the free candy). Halloween was very much a children's celebration. These days, however, there are just as many, if not more adult costumes in the stores and adult activities in the community. It seems that visiting haunted houses--really scary haunted houses-- and going through corn mazes at midnight are overshadowing Trick-or-Treating as the primary ritual for the day. I find this change interesting because it seems not so much a new invention in ritual as a reversion to the original focus of Halloween rituals: messing around with the really scary spirits of the dead. But I still get the biggest kick out of seeing young children in costumes at my door, shouting "Trick-or-Treat!" and then craning their little necks so they can see what they got. It's like magic, isn't it? Say three words and you get candy from stangers.