Happy Thanksgiving All

We are on holiday in the US.  Thanksgiving...turkey dinner, big family gathering and all.  The tradition was started by colonists in America.  Do y'all elsewhere also celebrate Thanksgiving?

Nope.


It's early but I had to add text to this pic and now I don't want to lose it

Australia Day...

January 26th..

Wiki wrote:Australia Day is the official national day of Australia. Celebrated annually on 26 January, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and raising of the Flag of Great Britain at that site by Governor Arthur Phillip.

Oh, okay. But "national day" might be confused in the US with our Independence day.

Thanksgiving is in memory of a rare effort at peace and harmony. It was a feast arranged by Pilgrims, to which Native Americans were specifically invited so that good will and neighborly relations might be established.

Turkeys were hunted, cooked and served...along with corn, squashes and other native foods. Hence, the turkey is the traditional Thanksgiving holiday feast.

I'm sure American's in the UK celebrate thanksgiving and I suppose some Brits do as well. We're good at jumping on anyone else's celebrations - any excuse for a knees up will do.

Here in Scotland our national day is St Andrews Day. It's this Sunday, November 30. Haggis, neeps, tatties, shortbread and whisky galore.

Bring on Jimmy Shand

Original Quill wrote:

Wiki wrote:
Australia Day is the official national day of Australia. Celebrated annually on 26 January, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and raising of the Flag of Great Britain at that site by Governor Arthur Phillip.

Oh, okay.  But "national day" might be confused in the US with our Independence day.

Thanksgiving is in memory of a rare effort at peace and harmony.  It was a feast arranged by Pilgrims, to which Native Americans were specifically invited so that good will and neighborly relations might be established.

Turkeys were hunted, cooked and served...along with corn, squashes and other native foods.  Hence, the turkey is the traditional Thanksgiving holiday feast.

 THERE IS an Australian-American Friendship Society/Association in existence down here, and they will be holding Thanksgiving dinners in restaurants and halls wherever they might have branches around Oz..  

THE Aussie independence/foundation day is more correctly 'Federation Day' ~ January 1st, as that's the first day [in 1901] that the parliament sat, the day that Oz became a Commonwealth, and the day that the Aussie Constitution was enacted and Britain began the long drawn-out process of independence ~ accelerated by Britain's abandonment of it's colonies in early 1939/1940 (the Japanese invasion of Malaysia and Singapore), and culminating in the final separation of the last legal powers by th British Parliament in 1978...    
AS New Year's Day already has a public holiday here on January 1st, Federation Day often doesn't get the kind of attention that it really deserves (and also, it's a bit too close to Christmas day)..

HOWEVER, when it comes to commemorating the same issues and factors that you Americans have on "Thanksgiving" Day, down here the closest of our holidays covering some of them are celebrated on Australia Day and to a lesser degree the Queens Birthday..

ODDLY enough, the only day that serving up a Turkey at Lunch would be considered 'traditional' in Oz would most likely be at Christmas.

BECAUSE Australia Day celebrates the landing of Governor (then Lieut., and later Capt.) Philip at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, in 1788, and the declaration of Botany Bay as Britain's latest colony; many (a large minority..) Aborigines refer to it as "Invasion Day" ~ and many of them and their supporters would like to see the date changed to something of equal or close significance.

THE MOST suitable day to change to would likely be "Coral Sea Day" [the 7th or 8th of May] as that day recognises the turning of WWII in our favour in the Pacific, when the USA defeated and turned back the Japanese Navy, aided by Australian Navy and Air force (and to a lesser extent, some Kiwi and Indian efforts) in the western extremes of those conflicts ~ AND we currently don't have a "holiday" on that day..

ONE needs to choose an alternative date that would be suitable for a coupe of reasons -
* it needs to be significant and worthwhile, and
* it ALSO helps if it's located fairly equidistant between other holidays...    

Thanksgiving is one of four major holidays. The other three are: Christmas, New Years Day and Independence Day. These are the days when the Post Office and Banks are closed, and transit runs on limited or no schedule.

I was a foggy morning. I took a walk and sat down on a park bench next to an old lady with her small dog. We talked about her complaints with the turkey dinner at the Mill Valley Community Center.

Then some young people in their teens and twenties came by. They were delivering fudge cake to the Center. The had a small dog too. They became acquainted.

Then I continued my walk through the redwood trees on a path. Like this….



Eerie silence.