Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Beginning to get that over the river and through the woods feeling. This coming Sunday we head out for Denver. Kate discovered, in a drive to Denver that she made this spring, that if she drives, her back doesn’t give her fits. So, she’ll drive and I’ll watch. Lot of good book thinking between here and the Rockies.
Holiseason has begun to assert itself more and more. I’ve heard the occasional Christmas song, seen the articles about Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, been asked what we’re doing for them. Now the feelings, those old, yet always new feelings, Holiseason feelings have begun to bubble up. They’re positive for me, though I know they aren’t for a lot of folks.
As a pagan these days, I focus on the lights, the many festivals of light, the Christmas tree, the Yule log, the Thanksgiving medieval banquet, the turn of yet another new year, but reserve my real longing for the Winter Solstice. It has become my favorite and most significant holiday of the sacred year. I’ll be writing more about it as it approaches.
Now it’s Thanksgiving. When growing up in Indiana, we went to my Aunt Marjorie’s for Thanksgiving. She was the acknowledged queen of the kitchen in the Keaton family universe, consistently turning out great meals. The kids got the card tables in the family room while the adults had the dining room table. After the meal, the men would retire to watch football and smoke cigars.
I would read comic books, generally try to huddle in a corner somewhere, usually overwhelmed by the mass of people. Too many and too little chance to escape. Even so Thanksgiving was a strong part of the glue that held the Keatons together, me and my 21 first cousins. It’s now a shared memory, several blocks in the quilt that covers our generation.
Later on Kate and I cooked many Thanksgiving dinners here in Andover, for many different configurations, but those days have waned with the movement of the kids to lands far from here. So now we pick up and go to Jon and Jen’s who cook in their renovated kitchen.
We’ve done a couple of family Thanksgivings at Lutsen and I hope we can again.
And I don’t even like turkey. Go figure.
