{"id":2539,"date":"2010-11-28T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T17:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2539"},"modified":"2010-11-27T19:15:50","modified_gmt":"2010-11-27T06:15:50","slug":"thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/11\/28\/thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 25 was Thanksgiving Day in the US, but the long weekend continues through until today, Sunday 28. Thanksgiving isn’t a festival that we celebrate in NZ at all and I know there’s also a strong historical context for the holiday in the US, around the early pilgrim settlers and the food they received from the North American Indian people which helped them survive.<\/p>\n

So, a particularly American story—but I do think the idea of a festival around “taking stock” and celebrating just “being here” is a really good idea. In many ways that process is part of New Year, but an aspect that gets a little lost in the “big party” celebration that has become our tradition—at least here in New Zealand. And of course, because our New Year falls in the middle of summer, rather than winter, the weather encourages<\/em> the big party as opposed to reflection and drawing close around a fire with family and friends.<\/p>\n

Like many people in NZ this week, the Pike River mining tragedy has put me more into that reflective frame of mind—not just thinking about how terrible this time must be for the families and friends of the 29 men who died, but also making me more appreciative of my own “fortunate life”<\/a>, even if some of that good fortune sometimes seems very everyday and easily overlooked.<\/p>\n

Very simple things: like sunshine; the intense green of leaves and the way the sun edges them with light, and the blue of the sky; taking a few moments to sit on the back step with my little cat buddy, who has various names but has been a buddy for 18 years now; having a back step to sit on that is more or less intact, following the September 4 Christchurch earthquake and its aftermath; not just having enough to eat, every day—which so many people in the world don’t—but food that I enjoy as well; music to listen to; books to read … And always the big stuff: partner, family, friends—and the rare and wonderful privilege of being able to string words into poems and stories, some of which have found their way into the world as books.<\/p>\n

Big things; little things—but all well worth that moment of appreciation, of consciously giving thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday 25 was Thanksgiving Day in the US, but the long weekend continues through until today, Sunday 28. Thanksgiving isn’t a festival that we celebrate in NZ at all and I know there’s also a strong historical context for the holiday in the US, around the early pilgrim settlers and the food they received from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2539"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2548,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}