Blogtrek

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving, the second most important holiday in the year in the United States of America. It is a uniquely American holiday, with no counterparts much elsewhere, although Canada has its Thanksgiving in another month. It features a turkey dinner. Since only two of us live at my house, baking a huge 8-lb turkey does not seem to make sense; it results in turkey meals all the way to Yule, it seems. So we cooked instead three turkey legs. Maybe we should save the turkeys and have a vegetarian Thanksgiving meal and save the poor birds. As far as the meaning of the holiday, it seems to imply a God, to give thanks to, but I don't believe in such a personal God. So I simply feel glad for all the good things that have happened this year. My congregation got it right on their Thanksgiving service. They hosted a play featuring a family wanting to leave their country because men in uniform were stationing in their community and were about to monitor or even arrest them. Where did they go? America. The land of freedom of speech, of economic opportunity, and religious freedom. I just hope our country continues to be a haven for retreat from repression elsewhere; there is still a lot of it in this world. I know we have had Planeattack and feel threatened by other countries' and organizations' (such as al Qaeda) weapons, but we must not give up these freedoms. That is one of the special things about being Americans.