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Celebrate! Holidays In The U.S.A.



Thanksgiving Day
(Fourth Thursday in November)


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Almost every culture in the world has held celebrations of thanks for a plentiful harvest. The American Thanksgiving holiday began as a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago.



In 1620, a boat filled with more than one hundred people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World. This religious group had begun to question the beliefs of the Church of England and they wanted to separate from it. The Pilgrims settled in what is now the state of Massachusetts. Their first winter in the New World was difficult. They had arrived too late to grow many crops, and without fresh food, half the colony died from disease. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn (maize), a new food for the colonists. They showed them other crops to grow in the unfamiliar soil and how to hunt and fish.



In the autumn of 1621, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so a feast was planned. They invited the local Indian chief and 90 Indians. The Indians brought deer to roast with the turkeys and other wild game offered by the colonists. The colonists had learned how to cook cranberries and different kinds of corn and squash dishes from the Indians. To this first Thanksgiving, the Indians had even brought popcorn.



In following years, many of the original colonists celebrated the autumn harvest with a feast of thanks. After the United States became an independent country, Congress recommended one yearly day of thanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. George Washington suggested the date November 26 as Thanksgiving Day. Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving*.


The President's Yearly Proclamation

Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, a different date every year. The President must proclaim that date as the official celebration. Here is an excerpt from President George Bush's Thanksgiving proclamation of 1990:

"The historic observance of a day of thanksgiving at Plymouth, in 1621, was one of many occasions on which our ancestors paused to acknowledge their dependence on the mercy and favor of Divine Providence. Today, on this Thanksgiving Day, likewise observed during a season of celebration and harvest, we have added cause for rejoicing: the seeds of democratic thought sown on these shores continue to take root around the world...
"The great freedom and prosperity with which we have been blessed is cause for rejoicing - and it is equally a responsibility... Our "errand in the wilderness," begun more than 350 years ago, is not yet complete. Abroad, we are working toward a new partnership of nations. At home, we seek lasting solutions to the problems facing our nation and pray for a society "with liberty and justice for all," the alleviation of want, and the restoration of hope to all our people....


"Now, therefore, I, George Bush, president of the United States of America, do hereby call upon the American people to observe Thursday, November 22, 1990, as a National Day of Thanksgiving and to gather together in homes and places of worship on that day of thanks to affirm by their prayers and their gratitude the many blessings God has bestowed upon us."




Thanksgiving is a time for tradition and sharing. Even if they live far away, family members gather for a reunion at the house of an older relative. All give thanks together for the good things that they have. In this spirit of sharing, civic groups and charitable organizations offer a traditional meal to those in need, particularly the homeless. On most tables throughout the United States, foods eaten at the first thanksgiving have become traditional.




*1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt set it one week earlier. He wanted to help business by lengthening the shopping period before christmas. Congress ruled that after 1941 the 4th Thursday in November would be a federal holiday proclaimed by the President each year.

Symbols of Thanksgiving

Turkey, corn (or maize), pumpkins and cranberry sauce are symbols which represent the first Thanksgiving. Now all of these symbols are drawn on holiday decorations and greeting cards.
The use of corn meant the survival of the colonies. "Indian corn" as a table or door decoration represents the harvest and the fall season.



Sweet-sour cranberry sauce, or cranberry jelly, was on the first Thanksgiving table and is still served today. The cranberry is a small, sour berry. It grows in bogs, or muddy areas, in Massachusetts and other New England states. The Indians used the fruit to treat infections. They used the juice to dye their rugs and blankets. They taught the colonists how to cook the berries with sweetener and water to make a sauce. The Indians called it "ibimi" which means "bitter berry." When the colonists saw it, they named it "crane-berry" because the flowers of the berry bent the stalk over, and it resembled the long-necked bird called a crane. The berries are still grown in New England. Very few people know, however, that before the berries are put in bags to be sent to the rest of the country, each individual berry must bounce at least four inches high to make sure they are not too ripe!

In 1988, a Thanksgiving ceremony of a different kind took place at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. More than four thousand people gathered on Thanksgiving night. Among them were Native Americans representing tribes from all over the country and descendants of people whose ancestors had migrated to the New World.
The ceremony was a public acknowledgment of the Indians' role in the first Thanksgiving 350 years ago. Until recently most schoolchildren believed that the Pilgrims cooked the entire Thanksgiving feast, and offered it to the Indians. In fact, the feast was planned to thank the Indians for teaching them how to cook those foods. Without the Indians, the first settlers would not have survived.





"We celebrate Thanksgiving along with the rest of America, maybe in different ways and for different reasons. Despite everything that's happened to us since we fed the Pilgrims, we still have our language, our culture, our distinct social system. Even in a nuclear age, we still have a tribal people."
-Wilma Mankiller, prinicipal chief of the Cherokee nation

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity

..A tribute and a birthday wish to the father of 3 of my children and several others too.It would have been his 50th birthday today.He passed away in sept 1999.Happy Birthday and RIP.

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Hi there everyone....

a belated thanksgiving too all!!

I have been offline for several months now...extreme money problems, phone cut off etc etc!

Hopefully this side of xmas i should be back online...i do hope you have all been well.

I have been bumbling along..good days..bad days..quiet days..stressful days.

dejunking my house..(and therefore my brain) rediscovering all the books on my bookshelf..its easy to forget what all is there sometimes.

I had an all day getting ready for halloween day as i had flu so felt awful but was determined not to let little people down, so me and karen spent all day putting up decs and we made a grave stone out of a big cardboard box and painted it..(i was pleased with it actually, it really looks like stone)..i then painted on it "here lies your past and your future" hehe..and went out and created a grave shaped pile of turf...made easier coz i have been digging up the turf in the front garden to lay gravel..but was not easy coz i was sweating so much and felt so weak...but it was done and looked good...then we made 36 ghost cakes and iced them and dressed up in time for people to start knocking on the door...so our halloween was an all day experience hehe!

Karen learned to ride her bike on the 5th nov and at the end of that week she also learned to tie her shoe laces!

Catherine has decided she wants to do a child care course after xmas and is feeling and looking a lot more like herself and more positive about everything!

Josephine has a job starting tomorrow..a training post at the tesco store in town.. as its a training post the job centre will pay her travel expenses and she will still recieve her job seekers allowance but has a good chance of a job at the end of it!

Matthew now has a study plan all worked out with most of the materials he needs and i have also been told of a trust fund i can try applying to for funding for materials he needs!

Jamie has had a small promotion where he works and also a job offer at a different company..more money but further from home, so he will be asking his present employer about a pay rise to stay.

I had a blood test to check for arthritis a few weeks back but the sample clotted..(which happenes apparently..sometimes...although it worried me a little) so i need to redo that and also now have a test for thyroid...all my symptoms are pointing to an underactive one.

We are all at my moms this weekend to celebrate thanksgiving...my brother, my sister, her husband and their daughter and matthew karen and myself..and my brothers 2 boys.

we opted for a mexican feel to our meal coz we all love it, so we had enchelada bake with sweet potatos, refried beans,coleslaw,and salad followed by a big slice of nice deep pumpkin pie and cream...MMMM MMMMMM!!!

I STILL FEEL STUFFED TODAY LOL

We will be heading off home later this evening, so hopefully i've managed to fit everything in this update lol.....ohhhhhhhh....one other thing...

i have been being bombarded with memories lately so i have decided to start something which i knew i wanted to do one day and write my life story...so far anyway hehe...

Coz one day i may reach a point where i dont remember anything at all! So i think its gonna be a lot of fun..i'm looking forward to getting stuck into it!

Well...i really hope you are all well, and i have missed being here, and hope to catch up with you all real soon..

*HUGZ*

xox

Well...i don't know really how to start this, i have been trying to find time to myself for the last couple of days to empty my head of all thats in it, but i have a housefull of people and i'm not even sure its organised in my head yet anyway.

So, i'm just going with how it comes out..

We managed to go an see my brother on friday, but before we went we had to take my daughter for her first scan..my ex, myself, Catherine and her b/f and my youngest karen went along, all expectant and happy...

When we got into the room we all piled in and waited, but there was an problem, the baby wasnt as big as it should have been for 14 weeks and they think it must have died some weeks ago.

that was the most awful hour i have been party to for a long time..waiting in a room for a doctor to talk to us,listening to Catherine and Josh's grieving distressed crying, mick was upset, i was upset..for them, for karen who didnt really know what was happning yet, and for mick who didnt know whether he should comfort anyone but who was upset himself too, they had so been looking forward to this baby, Catherine had picked up so much from the down state she had been in..

so we had a very quiet journey home, when we got here, i felt bad all over again, coz i told Terry what had happened, (my boyfriend) and he automatically came to hug me, but i felt i didnt want him near me becoz who was i to need a hug...Cat and Josh were distraught, mick was upset and had no one to turn to here for his comfort..karen was venting her upset and confusion with stroppy behaviour..

I sometimes feel like i'm a sponge for everyone elses emotions..i want to soak them all up and take the hurt away and wash it clean...but then that means i hold my hurt in, and i felt like i just wanted to cry and cry and not stop.

It also brought back a lot of my feelings from when i was 16 and i had given birth to a baby i couldnt keep and was given up for adoption, i have spoken to Catherine last nite and she said she was thinking about how i must have felt at that time too, and although the situation is a bit different she doesnt know how i could have coped.

I coped at the time by looking in on my life for several months after that day and not taking part in it myself, as if i was above myself watching things happen as if not to me.

I'm so glad they feel they can talk about it tho and not bottle it all up, as Catherine has done for so long.

I get the impression also from a couple of people that we have told like it doesnt matter, shes only 16 and she was only 14 weeks pregnant, so she should be fine about it..and that is SOOO not the case at all.

SOO, after we delt with that i had to quickly switch off and check with mick that he was still ok to take me to see my brother, and check with Cat if she minded if i still went, then i had about an hour to pack up some lunch,and get going..

It was a gorgeous day too, we had a pretty silent journey down to wood green..then we parked up and found the tube,...now i have never before in all the times i have been going downj to london to see my sister negotiated the tube on my own before, either she or my brother have been with me or met me and i get palpatations at the thought of doing it although its been something i have been determined to achieve for a long time...BUT mick had no idea where we had to get to, on what train or anything, so when we got into the station i went straight to the map, found the stops we needed where we needed to change, no hassle no stress, we got on the trains, and to white chapel tube in 20 mins, easy as pie..

then we got into the hospital which is opposite the tube, met my brothers girlfriend at the lift and went up to see him..we had been picturing all kinds of horrors, but he looked lots better than that, his arm wound was still open and bandaged as they wanted to make sure no infection was in there before they closed it up..which they did on friday night...he was very sleepy tho and bruised, but still had his sense of humour,and still thinking like himself, racking his brain to try and remember what happened, where he'd been etc. The doctors and nurses are all so pleased with his progress, and he went from critical to being on a normal ward in a matter of days.

He will still have a bit of time in there to be right as rain, but is doing really well..

we were there for about an hour and a half and had to leave as we only had 2 hour parking on the car..

then i managed to get us from the hospital back to the car on the tube, again stress free, no hassle, straight from A to B..although once we'd seen fred we could have taken a train to timbuctoo and taken a week to get back and we wouldnt have cared,lol

So,  a happier journey home, but i felt so exhausted, i slept a lot of the way..

and was very tired by the time we got back at about 9.30..

the weekend was spent with me being kinda aloof if i dont have a hug i cant cry right?

becoz if i had started i wouldnt stop..i sometimes feel as tho we are part of some cruel experiment and we are supposed to go thorough all these things to see how we deal with them, we have been through more situations than some people ever see in a lifetime..and i just want it to stop. Everything gets thrown at us all the time and just when you think you can be happy about something for a while it gets messed up and ripped away from us again!!

And here i'll stop for now, my brain is mush again!!

Last nite i got a phone call to say that my brother (Astral Spirit) had been involved in an accident in the blackwall tunnel...

Then began a barage of urgent phonecalls between myself, my mum,my sister,my brothers girlfriend (spiritobliss) and the police, trying to establish details !

My sister is the closest to him as they both live in London so the police arrived to take her to the Royal London hospital where he was taken.

His spine and pelvis were checked and fine, still dont know theb results on his neck but i assume that was ok, his arm was badly broken and he had internal bleeding in his chest and air where it shouldnt be,so they were worried about that.

He underwent a 4 hour operation on his arm last nite into the small hours of this morning,and i recieved a call from my sister this mo9rning to say that he was doing ok and was still sedated, but will need more ops on his arm!

Apperntly he told police at the scene he didnt know what happened but he seemed to lose control of the bike, but the police closed the tunnel for a time as they had reason to belive it was a hit and run from behind!

We will have to wait for the details on that as and when!

But for now, he is stable !

We are all sending him our prayers!