Hard on historians
I've never been a fan of Thanksgiving. Sure the “idea” was not lost on me to any great extent, but the problem is that I was raised knowing not only the American history and leaving it there. No, I was raised with the UK history as well, never content for half histories. And to be honest? The whole pilgrim thing? I would say it would have been better had the ships sunk.
It might be harsh to say, but then again, one needs to really, really understand the full scope of history to understand that these events started rolling with the War of the Roses, the end of the Tutor eras and the start of the Elizabethan era.
The people seeking religious freedom would have been noted as extremists even in their own insanely over zealous church period of time. And with them came some of the strictest, discriminating concepts that, from a world view still scar the U.S. today. It makes the holiday that much harder to enjoy on that level, but as they say, ignorance is bliss.
Blogging and topic selection
Blogging is a great past time for many people. However, some people need some help in picking out the topics that they plan on covering with their blog. Here are some helpful hints that can help ensure you are able to keep blogging all the time without losing any of your readership.
Household cleaning is easy
Cleaning your home can be easy to do if you know about the different items you need to have to do this properly. When you know about these items, it is easy for you to purchase them and get the proper ones. Without this information, you may end up getting the wrong cleaners and not be able to successfully complete your cleaning jobs.
Write a letter to Santa
Santa is a tradition at Christmas time and writing letters to him is something almost all children have done at one point in time. I know for me I have written many a letter to Santa and it almost never came back to me, unless it had a letter from Santa as well. Here are some of the things you should ensure your children include in their letters to Santa.
Tea: A great beverage, especially sweetened
Drinking tea can be a great thing to do. I really love to drink a cup of Chai tea and it helps soothe my throat and sinuses as well. However, it never seemed to be sweet enough. This is when I started to use sugar, but it never seemed to reach a perfect balance and would drastically alter the taste of the tea. To help me with this issue though, I started to use honey in my tea, which is a great solution.
Mistakes and consequences
We are all human and have made many mistakes in our lifetimes. Every mistake—small or large—has the potential to result in catastrophic consequences. Recently, a young woman in Dallas exited a small private plane and inadvertently stepped into a spinning propeller. This was a small mistake in that she was preoccupied and for just a microsecond her attention wandered. In another sense it was obviously a large mistake because the consequences were disastrous; she lost one eye, the side of her face and one arm.
Almost any mistake can be defined not by size, but by how bad the consequences are. A shopper in a mall was walking along the aisle between the stores while looking down to carry on a texting conversation. It was hilarious to watch when the footage was posted on You Tube and showed the shopper walking directly into the reflecting pool set in the middle of the mall’s first floor. Being totally absorbed in texting was a small mistake that would have been a large one if the person involved had been driving a car instead of walking and collided with another vehicle.
And some mistakes are impossibly large to begin with and yet the consequences are small. Many years ago, I purchased a Swedish made automatic pistol. Being Swedish, it was very complicated with a number of different safety devices built in to ostensibly assure the gun couldn’t fire accidentally. I immediately took the pistol to my dad’s house to show it to him. We were sitting at the kitchen table while I was demonstrating how the unfamiliar gun worked when it accidentally went off. The slug dug a hole in the tabletop and careened off it to lodge in the ceiling. The bullet struck the tabletop approximately one foot to the left of where my dad was sitting.
This was a huge mistake in that the gun was loaded to start with and also that I did not know how to handle it properly. The consequences were small in that my father wasn’t wounded or killed—an outcome too terrible to contemplate—and I learned lessons that have stuck with me throughout the years.
My life is full of small and large mistakes and I find myself unconsciously revisiting them from time to time. The list of mistakes is long and the results could have been much worse that they were. I have been incredibly lucky in that the consequences have always been small and I realize I have done nothing to deserve this good fortune. At these times I fervently give thanks. I don’t know if I am thanking God, Karma or the universe-at-large. I am simply giving thanks in the best way I can.
While it is certainly not necessary to wait until Thanksgiving Day, it does provide an excellent venue for me to stop, reflect and realize how fortunate I have been and give sincere and heartfelt thanks.
Travel plans made easy
Traveling to a new town can be exciting, but it can be trying as well. This is when you should know some information about the towns you plan on traveling to and then you can have a great time without any issues. Without this advice, you can still have a great time, but it's more likely that you will be more anxious about what you can do.
Farm fresh turkey for Thanksgiving
Buying a turkey for Thanksgiving is typically a tradition. However, what you may not realize is you can break the tradition of heading to the local grocery store and head to the local farm instead. Here are some of the reasons to buy a farm fresh turkey instead of buying one frozen at the grocery store.
Let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving
I am not equipped to discuss Thanksgiving meal ideas, cooking tips and so forth. There are many other talented writers who can expound upon such things here and elsewhere. However, I am equipped to expound upon this theme: how Thanksgiving should be Thanksgiving and not another hum-drum day on the calendar like it is at risk of becoming.
Walk into, say, a Sears or Menards in early October and what do you find? Decorated Christmas trees lined up in rows, boxes of lights, tree ornaments and other Yuletide décor, all ready and waiting to be picked up, along with giant Santa and other inflatable yard displays set up to lure buyers to purchase one for their home.
You have to double-check the calendar after walking out to make sure you didn’t miss a month or two. When I worked at Cub Foods, I remember seeing the tinniest of displays for Thanksgiving items but row upon row of Christmas stuff each year. Whenever I saw that, I would think: whatever happened to Thanksgiving?
It is more than just Christmas items elbowing out the Thanksgiving ones, however, that is contributing to make Thanksgiving a holiday at risk.
We always closed for Thanksgiving Dayn when I worked at Cub Foods. Always. No exceptions, no special events, no nothing. Our doors were shut and lines of grocery carts were lined up out in front of them to tell the world we were closed for the day but would see you tomorrow starting at 6 a.m. when the carts would be returned inside and the doors unlocked once more.
Alas, the doors of the likes of Kroger, Whole Foods and Winn Dixie will not be locked this Thanksgiving, but rather will be open for customers from late morning to mid-afternoon all across the country. Why? Just how many forgetful Thanksgiving shoppers are there who will need to rush in to buy last-minute items for their holiday meal?
Even worse are the likes of retail stores whose doors will be open during the daytime on Thanksgiving such as Sears (7 a.m. to 12 p.m.), Kmart (7 a.m. to 9 p.m.), or Wal Mart (all day). Work for them, but have a family get-together taking place? Too bad! It’s off to your work shift instead as your employer tries to get a leg-up on the lucrative “Black Friday” trade.
A holiday is supposed to be a special time of the year. The more we push Christmas at the expense of Thanksgiving, and the more we put people to work on Thanksgiving Day when they deserve to be at home with their families, we are going to make the holiday Abraham Lincoln made official in 1863 become just another hum-drum day on the calendar like the bulk of them are.
It is time to let Thanksgiving be Thanksgiving, a special time when the nine to five shuffle ceases, big businesses take a pause for breath and we all give our various reasons to be thankful, as well as enjoy the company of family and friends over a good meal, as the world outside our homes takes on a slower tempo for the day.
Breaking holiday tradition
About five years ago we realized that no one in my family was fond of turkey. We ate it during Thanksgiving dinner because that was what you're supposed to do, but the leftovers ended up sitting in the freezer until they were nothing more than a freezer burned hunk of ice. Or worse, they sat in the fridge for a week before being tossed down the garbage disposal.
Finally, we came to our senses and forgot about turkey and instead switched to ham. Oh, we still have the stuffing and cranberries, we like those parts of the tradition after all. I don't think we follow Christmas tradition either, usually opting for a pork loin instead of roast beef or goose. Some years we just have a big bowl of pasta!
Really, there is no need to follow traditions if they don't work for you. Turkey at 29 cents a pound is no bargain if you don't like it! In some cases we have gone a step further and even broken family tradition. Clam chowder, for example, has been my family's Christmas Eve tradition for generations. Yuck! I changed it to a delivered pizza and an evening of driving to look at Christmas lights and I don't even feel guilty.
Much of the stress around the holidays has to do with these antiquated traditions. We try so hard to keep everything exactly the same as it always has been that we lose all enjoyment. It's not just food, but decorations, activities and gift giving. If a tradition doesn't give you and your family enjoyment, why continue it? Instead, try changing them up or replacing them with something you enjoy more. If it doesn't work out, you can always go back to the old ways next year.