catapult magazine

for all of the americans on the board who celebrated thanksgiving this week: how was it? was traditions do you celebrate? how do you feel about the idea of gorging one’s self with food in order to show thanks? how do you deal with family (i’ll leave it at that)?

Is the gorging part a lead in to next weeks topic?
I love thanksgiving. I married a Canadian so I get two of them. For the past several years we’ve spent Thanksgiving with our friends. This year we’ll be spending it with family which is kind of fun.
My favorite part of Thanksgiving is church in the morning. I’ve never had better thanksgiving services than the one in our present church. The sunday school kids raised over 1100 bucks in a month to give to a heifer international type agency. Kids can’t understand money well, but the kindergartners understood the 3000+ fish they bought. Then the rest of the congregation brought food and money offerings and laid them in the front of the sanctuary. I’ve never seen an offering of thanks so visible before. We were presenting our gifts and ourselves to God. Very cool.
Oh, um…
I also like eating a lot and passing out in front of the TV watching football.

hah! i hadn’t really thought of the lead-up idea . . .

the service your church did sounds cool and very appropriate for thanksgiving. the church i grew up in used to do a sunrise service on thanksgiving, but we never really did anything as practical as that.

one of my favorite thanksgiving traditions is playing tackle football with a whole bunch of people from my old church. they/we have been playing football every thanksgiving for at least 20 years. we had 22 people this year, so we had to have a full offensive and defensive line. great fun! although i am still recovering . . .

We went to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year. Now, it is the MACY’S parade and it may seem a little obvious and passe to decry the corporate nature of the the event, but MAN. Everything was a commercial for something besides the marching bands from various high schools. Almost every ballon was a character that had a video you should buy or a show you should watch, and every float featured a celebrity promoting an album or film. There were a few exceptions: some of the more “traditional” floats and ballons (a generic and hilariously-shaped holiday elf and Santa Claus of course) were great. But I noticed that whenever they passed, everyone in the crowd went, “What is that? Who — what’s that supposed to be?”

I did miss our family’s tradition of bowling on thanksgiving. One of the few times every year we get together to DO something together. And I was trapped in Manhattan like a sucker.

Who says you have to gorge in order to properly celebrate?

We spent Thanksgiving at my in-laws. It was alright, mainly because my husband and I were able to go out together … saw “Master and Commander” and went out for sushi.

It was also very stressful to me, as I come from a quiet family … and my husband’s family is anything but. His parents are retired and tend to get spastic when everyone visits. My husband and his sister know how to ignore things (having grown up with them), but I’m still adjusting and trying not to be rude. This means I end up in conversations about people I don’t know and getting usurped as they cater to and spoil my toddler. Needless to say, he’s a complete brat today and I get to clean up the personality mess they created.

Also, I can’t say much about traditions on that side of the family. My mother-in-law says a quick grace … with her eyes open while shoving food at my son … and that’s about it, save for the holiday brandy old-fashioned before bed. My husband, son and I went to church Thanksgiving morning without the rest of them, as that’s always been a tradition on my side of the family.

Ho, ho, ho. Can’t wait for Christmas …