Thanksgiving::Rituals

Well, we all know the highlight of the darkening days of November is often in the warm glow of a shared meal with family and friends, Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving begins weeks before the actual day as we prepare the meal plans, invite the company, and simply think about food.  We anticipate the ritual foods of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.  Foods that we may not necessarily think about in any other month of the year, but in November they rule our minds.  So this month I have been thinking a lot about food.  I've been pondering this human phenomenon of the intermingle of food, emotion, spirituality, and health.  I can't say that I've come up with anything fundamentally profound, rather I find myself reveling in awe at how ritualistic we are as human beings. So much so that right down the to way we spread or pile the whipped topping on our pumpkin pie can influence how it tastes to us, how our hearts feel eating it.  Rituals are important, they give us structure and add continuity to a life that is often full of change.  Yet, sometimes they can get out of hand.  Let's take Black Friday, which has spilled over into Cyber Monday, leading to Christmas decorations in the stores the day after Halloween.  These are rituals that are taking over our day to day lives.  As corporations push these buying sprees into our minds more and more often, I find myself standing back and trying to catch a breath of fresh air.  I hear myself telling my husband that I don't 'believe' in Black Friday.  It's not that I don't believe it's happening, rather it connotates that there is something more I feel in the air around this particular ritual that I don't want my spirit to be a part of; it's my way of expressing that this ritual is not my ritual.  Simply excluding a ritual, though, doesn't by any means make me a Christmas Scrooge.  The rituals that give structure to my celebration of Christmas are traditions my husband and I have developed over the years to both ease the sting of living far from family, and to bring joy and peace to our growing children.  Traditions that we try to do down to the specific, same gift the kids open on Christmas Eve each year.  They are rituals we have borrowed from other people, or ones we have made up ourselves so that during this time of year, when we all lean into the warmth of home a bit more, through them we can offer ourselves and our families meaning in an otherwise chaotic world.  May we not take these simple pleasures of time spent together, smelling wassail simmering on the stovetop, and laughing at one another's jokes for granted.  May we not yield them to the corporate driven profit margin that has crept into a holiday already rich with meaning.

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you!  I hope your next weeks are full, rich, and true to what this holiday means to you.  PS: I just started a new book called, Birthrite, about humanity's need for nature. Should be interesting, I'll keep you posted.