Thanksgiving in SA…

I’m not an American in any way or shape (I aint round or extremely skinny, which seems to be the 2 available shapes in America) but I celebrated Thanksgiving with a special friend from the USA last night and I gotta say, yikes, you guys know how to food! No wonder one of the shapes is round…

Sigh!

Anyways, before we all dug into the food that we all made ourselves (I made green bean casserole 🙂 and it was amazing) she told us a quick breakdown of where the tradition came from. So, I googled it and inevitably, got lost in the black hole that is the Internet for about an hour before reading about Thanksgiving. I knew the just of it already, the European settlers going over to North America in the year Something-long-ago-hundred and then dying because they couldn’t grow anything in the soil and had no medical (kind of the same as it is now, except back then it was free where it was found). So the Indians (not the ones from India…) came over and helped the white man to grow crops and stay alive. So after the first harvest they all gave thanks to God for provision and all that stuff.

This is what Wikipedia says:

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens”, to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November. Thanksgiving was also celebrated nationally in 1789, after a proclamation by George Washington. As a federal and public holiday in the U.S., Thanksgiving is one of the major holidays of the year. Together with Christmas and New Year, Thanksgiving is a part of the broader holiday season.

The event that Americans commonly call the “First Thanksgiving” was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in 1621. This feast lasted three days, and it was attended by 90 Native Americans (as accounted by attendee Edward Winslow) and 53 Pilgrims. The New England colonists were accustomed to regularly celebrating “thanksgivings”—days of prayer thanking God for blessings such as military victory or the end of a drought.

This painting, “The First Thanksgiving,” by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris (1863-1930), is historically inaccurate in several ways. According to Plimoth Plantation, the Wampanoag did not wear elaborate feather headdresses like those shown; there should be more Wampanoags than colonists; the Wampanoag would not have been sitting on the ground.

I feel kinda sad, I’m not saying that they don’t anymore, but how many Americans remember the root of this holiday? “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens” It’s the same with Christmas celebrations, which is worldwide. People who know me, know that I am not at all a Christmassy type of person. This time of the year gets me worked up about stupid stuff, the malls are all crazy, the prices are even crazier and EVERYTHING seems fake. The only thing that I like about Christmas is the relationships, eating together, spending time together.

uh huh!

The rest of it rattles me up, what does a massive pine tree, not indigenous to South Africa, have to do with the birth of Christ, which wasn’t even in December???

Moving along, I found this interesting piece on Thanksgiving history, obviously I don’t know whether it is true or not, it is interesting non-the-less. What I will say is that I am slightly envious of the Americans and their traditions, if only the real reason for thanksgiving was still celebrated and not the commercialised turkey money making thing.

Venting over, here are 10 things what I am thankful for (for 2014):

1. Heavenly Father… because I live and He loves me, and everything in this list is thanks to Him!
2. I got a TEFL certificate, which enables me (if I ever wanted to) to teach English as a foreign language.
3. 4 accounts got paid off (almost debt free), and gaining some financial freedom.
4. Amazing people who opened up their home to me for about 11 months (you know who you are).
5. Amazing people who opened their home for me to live with them, with my own massive room,
6. and a car to go with it. ETERNALLY GREATFUL!!! (Again, you know who you are)
7. Being humbled and taught that vulnerable is not weakness.
8. Doing BSSM (Breakthru School of Supernatural Ministry) combined first year.
9. Being able to do BSSM second year, next year.
10. And just recently, registering to start a BCom degree next year.

What 10 things are you thankful for??

This is Serie-ous!!!

Game of Thrones, Suits, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Grey’s Anatomy, House, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Once Upon A Time, No Life… oh no wait, that last one is not a series, but you get my point. With so many options on the series buffet table for the brain it’s no wonder we struggle with real life stuff!!

So much to watch, so little time!!

We engross ourselves so deep into our fantasy lives that when our real lives fall apart we don’t understand why. By real lives I mean the life where you have to work for your food and where your boyfriend doesn’t take you back when you cheated on him. The life where if you are running away from some drug dealers and find yourself in the middle of some big attorney firm’s interviews the last thing that will happen is you get a job. Or MAYBE these things just happen in America, I can’t think why they have employment issues…

Classics!! This is what it was all about!

Anyway, I haven’t watched series of any kind for almost a year. What I mean by watched is, I haven’t lost days worth of time by binge watching one series till the birds let me know its time to wake up from not sleeping and get ready for work, where all you can think about is whether Dexter will find the person who did that nasty thing to that other person! No, I didn’t go on a brain cleanse or something weird like that. I just didn’t have a pc to watch it off of. Well, that and my previous housemates did not have a TV. I gotta say It’s been great. You have a crap load of time if you don’t spend all your time watching other people live their lives. That being said, I do love series but the classics, like Friends, Scrubs, Seinfeld,  you know the good stuff. Oh but wait, Harvey Specter!!!!!  Oh mama!

I like you too…THIS. I mean THIS

So, maybe I just need a serie-ous intervention. I recently got a laptop (a blessing from an amazing lady) and I am trying not to get sucked into the series vortex! Apart from working 2 jobs and doing classes and church, basically not having time for much other than catch up on sleep, it has been great not being consumed by the need to know what is happening next in a show. Or the agony of having to wait a whole year for the next season… YES, I am looking at you all my Game of Throne’rs, only a few more months till the killing continues, I don’t know why you all just don’t read the books. Spoiler-alert, averted! I am aiming to read the books this holiday,  but I am so far behind in the reading I should have done for class soooo yeah, my priorities are out of whack! For now, I am watching Friends because it makes me feel good.

Hmm… I don’t fully agree with that but its a good quote non the less.

What series are you stuck on or can’t wait for?