We celebrated Thanksgiving here on Sunday with a few friends staying as socially distant as is possible in a small house with rain drops falling all morning...
And I've always loved Thanksgiving.It's my favourite Holiday of the year.
It's a time when we celebrate being together without any strings.
No attachments to gifts, obligations,
Just good food, and good company.
I had to look up the time frame when the first Thanksgiving took place to try to understand how such a tradition would have come about.
So in 1621 after an entire winter of disease and death for the religious freedom-seekers who fled the repressive English government and sailed on the Mayflower with their women and children.
This contrasts dramatically with the settlement of Australia to Botany Bay of 850 convicts and their guards 167 years later in 1788.
Technology had obviously changed enough to allow them to survive the rigorous ocean voyage and especially they would not have been as frail to start off with as they would have been picked to be strong and able-bodied.
The pilgrams on the other hand, had lost more than half of their population during the first winter with only 5 of the 19 women surviving the arduous conditions: malnutrition, cold weather and disease on the ship.
Thankfully the Wampanoag tribe taught them how to fish, hunt and plant food that would survive the local conditions. The actual event known now as Thanksgiving would have taken place sometime between mid-Sept - late Nov as they celebrated the bounty of the Harvest.
And like now, after a year of disease on the planet, I find that being grateful for what we DO have takes on even more meaning, and I can understand how grateful the American forefathers were to simply be alive.
The question really is, how can you bring this insight into your daily existence?
