via the revgals --
1. Did you go elsewhere for the day, or did you have visitors at your place instead? How was it?
We will often share the day with friends but not this time. The only place we went was to the movies in the afternoon (we saw "August Rush" and liked it). We needed a quiet day to ourselves after the craziness of the end of the quarter. I didn't even get out of my jammies until about 2pm.
2. Main course: If it was the turkey, the whole turkey, and nothing but the turkey, was it prepared in an unusual way? Or did you throw tradition to the winds and do something different?
We had turkey on Wednesday, when we were at my cielo's work feeding over 150 day laborer, homeless, and undocumented folks. We had the full complement of traditional food -- turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie. We also had the best flan ever.
Yesterday we had my favorite breakfast (scrambled eggs and fried potatoes) and then later in the afternoon mango and coconut-encrusted tilapia (it comes already encrusted...hardly any work for us).
I have to say, I have a lot of ambiguity about this holiday, since "Thanksgiving" is a trumped-up holiday that is based on a myth. The day is one of mourning for American Indian people. Perhaps the Indians and Puritans shared a meal, once (that they actually did so is utterly unclear...read this, for example...), but that did not stop the whites from slaughtering them shortly after, and ever after up until the present day (poverty being a type of slaughter).
3. Other than the meal, do you have any Thanksgiving customs that you observe every year?
Watching football and movies.
4. The day after Thanksgiving is considered a major Christmas shopping day by most US retailers. Do you go out bargain hunting and shop ‘till you drop, or do you stay indoors with the blinds closed? Or something in between?
I am so NOT a shop-til-you-drop kind of person. But we were going to go grocery shopping and pick up some movies until this question reminded me that today is the high-holy-day of Capitalism. And so, we will wait until tomorrow. As I said to my cielo, when the bean-counters count up today's beans, they will not give a shit that we bought cereal and lightbulbs because we are out of them. They will only care that we BOUGHT. So we are participating in Buy Nothing Day instead.
5. Let the HOLIDAY SEASON commence! When will your Christmas decorations go up?
One of the few strict rules we have is that no Christmas decorations go up until after Advent has started.
Well, this is kind of a bummer friday five...I'm sure it was meant to be more festive but I guess that's kind of where I'm at right now. Certainly I am filled with thankfulness for my life, for old friends and new, for my cielo, for my family, for school, for y'all. But I don't need a special holiday that mythologizes a lie in order to cover up genocide in order to be thankful.
Off soapbox...Peace, y'all.
