Those who know me, know I harbor a grudge against Thanksgiving.
Whoa – hang on – ¡manténganse tranquilos! I do know what month it is. This isn’t an old blog from a bygone November I re-posted by accident (or on accident, as they say these days). I am here to talk about the autumnal equinox. By and by. Promise.
Right. So, I’ve borne my T-Day grudge a good long while.
Washington Elementary School had a lovely little theatre (at that time, the voters of Evanston, Illinois had never failed to pass a school bond measure). On staff was a lovely little drama teacher who made sure every grade got its yearly show-moment in the spotlight. The lucky 6th graders got double-happiness – a fall pageant and a spring play.
It was the autumn of 1962. I was in 4th grade, had just turned 9. I remember edging into a row mid-house and sitting down in one of the built-in wooden seats. The buzz and murmur of an excited audience before Curtain UP tingled against my skin.
At last the curtain rose (or, rather, was drawn back) on a green-and-brown forest-y set. A big (to my eyes) 6th grade boy in buckskin-ish “Indian” costume stepped into his light down stage right. The play was “The Story of Squanto.” Omg, my type of show. I was entranced.
Well, I was entranced for Act I, anyway. Act I was ¼ pre-European invasion, ¾ first contact. Act I invited me to identify with and bask in the idyllic, one-with-nature existence for which my heart yearned. In Act I, the lead (whose true wasn’t “Squanto”, but Tisquantum), and his people (Patuxet tribe of the Wampanoag Nation), met the ill-equipped, ill-prepared, literally ill Mayflower Pilgrims (Separatist Puritans – fanatical, religious zealots no other country could abide), with unconditional hospitality. In Act I, a young maiden of the tribe (my sister Liane – already quite an accomplished young ballerina) – danced a solo the Phys. Ed teacher had choreographed for her. I think she performed the dance in the First Thanksgiving scene? Anyway, she nailed it.
Act I ended with Squanto sailing off to visit England. Act II …
The real Act II would have had the ship that ended Act I picking up more natives, sailing them to Málaga, and selling them into slavery. Skipping that bit, the school pageant picked up the story with Squanto arriving home to find everyone he’d ever known and loved dead from a respiratory virus the colonists had shared with the tribe in exchange for all the kindnesses they’d received. From RSV, basically. Act II was a feckin’ Greek tragedy – only it wasn’t set in a far-away time and place, wasn’t designed to entertain the people of an ancient civilization and Gods who’d long since been labeled “mythical.” It was a tale that led to me, my society, my urban civilization, my existence in America.
I was horrified. I was mortified. I was dismayed.
As I grew older, the illogic of Thanksgiving began to grate. No way did the original Thanksgiving feast happen at the end of November. Not in New England, not possible. When I discovered that Thanksgiving had been holiday-ized in an effort to spread peaceful vibes over a Civil War-torn nation, sure, it made sense – but as far I could tell, its late November spot on the calendar just bumped up family-stress levels and pressurized the whole commercialization of Christmas thing.
For all my T-Day Scrooging, there is an aspect of Thanksgiving I love, and always have. When we lived in Evanston, every year on Thanksgiving Day, we’d pile into the car and Dad would drive us all down from Chicago to Gary, Indiana where Aunt Helen and Uncle Ely and our cousins Richard, Jo Ann, and Robert lived.
Going down to Gary was the best. I’d tag along behind Li and Jo Jo as we’d head out to a park or empty school playground, feeling smug about hanging out with the big girls and being in on all the big-girl talk. By the time we got back, the table would be groaning under the feast ever-ebullient Aunt Helen had laid, complete with roast turkey, stuffing, potatoes, beans, cranberry sauce, rolls and butter, pies (to die for), gawd knows what else, and, of course, the essential Midwest delicacies – baked yam (or sweet potato) casserole with baby-marshmallow topping and a fruit salad-filled Jell-O™ mold.
Los Angeles is rife with people who are on their own, aspiring actors and screenwriters without the wherewithal to haste back home for a quickie Thanksgiving with the folks, especially with Christmas right around the corner. When we lived there, our T-Day tradition was to invite our all-alone friends over to our place for a potluck.
These last 40 years in Sonoma, Thanksgiving dinner has once again been a family affair – and they’ve all been marvelous fun, cozy, comforting, full of love and good will, and, of course, delicious. I won’t deny, I’m thankful for them – for all the T-Day feasts, large and small, I’ve been privileged to enjoy.
I just wish these beautiful celebrations were divorced from the bogus “First Thanksgiving” fiction that denies the catastrophic repercussions of the Pilgrims’ incursion into Wampanoag territory. I wish Thanksgiving wasn’t the springboard into the winter holidays, the buzzing alarm-clock that rouses us to put up those decorations, pick a tree, and take advantage of Black Friday sales. I wish we celebrated Thanksgiving here, at Mabon. Where it belongs.
Autumn equinox is the crest of Summer’s great wave, the divine peak of a half-year of light, warmth, fruitfulness, and plenty. As day and night come into perfect balance, we step onto Libra’s scales, tilting them toward Winter’s darkness, cold, and scarcity — and Summer’s wave breaks, topples into her trough, rolls and tumbles across the shallows, and, about 6 weeks later, slides up on Samhain’s shore.
Just now I said, I wish Thanksgiving was celebrated at fall equinox — but in my soul, I believe it is. Who among us can deny the equinoctial imperative?
Marking the heart of the harvest season, Mabon has always been a time for harvest fairs. A fair held at one of the fairest times of the year attracts huge crowds. Huge crowds lead to all sorts of entertainment – eisteddfodau and ceilidhean (music/music & dance competitions), bake sales (fresh apple pies!), horse trading and horse racing, arts, crafts, drinking, gaming – what is a fall fest but a Pagan revel held in appreciation of life’s joys and life’s bounty?
The High Holy Days always fall in or around the autumn equinox-tide. Observance of the 10-day Jewish New Year ends with a night and a day of fasting and prayer: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Leaving the temple with the plaintive sound of the shofar still in your blood, walking into the sunset-beginning of a new year’s day cleansed and forgiven, breaking your fast with apples and honey … the heart overflows with peace and gratitude.
Here in Sonoma, Wine Country, California, Mabon is called “The Valley of the Moon Vintage Festival”. A tourist attraction, to be sure, a hedonistic indulgence in fine art, fine music, fine food, fine craft beers, and the finest wines (not to mention fire-fighter water fights, a 5K fun-run, movie night, and a grape stomp). The serious centerpiece of all this frivolity is the annual Blessing of the Grapes — a communal “thank you for this great place to live and this year’s grape harvest” that a priest officially directs to a Christian God, but surely goes straight to the ears of the valley’s true deity, Dionysus. A Sonoma tradition since 1897, Festival 2024 is an anniversary to boot. The first grapevines were planted in Sonoma Valley 200 years ago. Though I’ve no desire to be in attendance for any of the above, I’m thankful I’m here, in the Moon’s Valley, to honor her Dionysian bicentennial.
If there are no fairs or festivals in your vicinity, if your community doesn’t ritually offer thanks to the old Gods or new for the gifts of the season, still the mature and gracious beauty of Mother Earth clad in her fall colors cannot help but capture your heart. In some parts of the world, those colors alone are enough to take your breath away.
For me, her colors are the aged-gold of the afternoon sun slanting through the still-full branches of the trees and the rusty-red of the grape leaves in the vineyards, just starting to turn. They are the tiny, cream blossoms on the late-blooming bush in my front yard and the black-and-blonde honeybees who absolutely love them. The dusty-brown single-pronged antlers of the young stags who were just kicked out of the herd by their mums and decided to hang by my kitchen for a while. The white of the full Hunter’s Moon that transformed to a brilliant blue-gray-orange nebula as she shone through the corner of our “moon window” and came into our home.
So, enough already with photo-shopping cornucopias onto a “Thanksgiving Day” in late November, when fields lie fallow and barren, when trees and bushes are bare, when the birds and whales have already migrated, when the creatures of the wild sleep under the blanketing earth or scrounge for food above it. Mabon is the cornucopia of the year, the horn of plenty overflowing with abundance and nourishment. Mabon is Thanksgiving Day.
May all the blessings of the season be yours.
Being somewhat a Stoic it is with wry astonishment that I am grateful that the Powers That Be have held back Ragnarok (or Armageddon, your choice), especially considering the following. The history of newly arrived refugees (and their following generations) aforementioned treatment of this Land’s First People and it’s gifts from the Gods of Nature. And that the law that bad actions result in bad results has not yet been invoked. (History bears this out but not always in the time and manner that us mortals would prefer.)
Due to my upbringing I feel that there must be credence to the belief that the power of Love, Kindness and Belief in Equality by
a fewer number can overcome the actions of a larger number of uninformed and ill-intentioned.
To prove that I am not all Bah-Humbug during this Season of Renewal, I am ever Thankful for the many like minded I am aware of. (Including the co-respondants of this Blog and it’s Sponsor)
I’m so Thankful you read my blog and share your marvelous perspective with us all :)
Though I’m not a Stoic, to the extent understand the core Stoic beliefs, I’m in accord with them. Isn’t one of the first among them something like, “to enjoy a smooth flow of life, live in harmony with nature”? And while the idea that a few decent folk can overcome the machinations of the shameless many doesn’t sound entirely Stoic to me, trusting that the powers of good (love, kindness, egalitarianism) can triumph over the myriad evils in the world … that hero’s tale is my inner truth.
Yea mabon is a favorite season for me. The angle of the light is soothing after the blast of brightness in summer. Yello and orange have been my favorite colors since my childhood (my mom made me yellow and orange curtains for my full length bedroom windows) and I really enjoy the opportunity to slow down a bit to go inward a bit and to revel in the abundance that is part of my life
Thanks for sharing your wonderful words Risa and I hope to talk to you soon. Blessings.
Lovely to hear from you, Eleanor. Your entire comment made me smile. That angled light is so intrinsic to our sense of the season, isn’t it? Such a relief after the blazing high-overhead, white-gold sun of Summer. And same-same, autumnal colors have been central to my sense of decor since HS, when the centerpiece of my bedroom was a thick-pile, dark-brown, orange, and yellow swirly pattern rug and my bedside lamp was a little, orange Scandinavian design thing that cast a warm orange glow over everything. Revel away! BB
Risa,
It has been over 70 years since I experience a Thanksgiving like the one you described in your youth. Reading your post was a such a mondo memory trigger that those internal smiles of being pleased with my life flooded over me like warm honey.
Paula and I have grand (and great grand) children but are long bereft of Parents, older relatives and the the childhood experiences and feelings you so well described both literally and pictorially.
Though we live where scenes and events such as the pair of young bucks and the bees are common, the changes in life and society tend to take us away from the all important Tao. Your descriptions of the school play brought an additional avalanche of gratitude for my early life.
Always appreciate your posts so keep them coming.
Céad míle buíochas. Go raibh beannachtaí Bhríde ort.
Tá fáilte romhat, a chara. A sweet, strange thing, isn’t it, that as our short term memories start to glitch, long-lost childhood memories randomly rise to our awareness with shining clarity? Sweeter still, how those fond memories bring us such joy.
Having deer at your door is indeed a blessing!
Growing up in oh-so urban/suburban Chicago, my close encounters with deer were limited to petting zoos. I always dreamed of living so close to nature, deer would visit my yard. Dream come true. At this point, our local Odocoileus hemionus have given birth to so many generations, it’s literally a matter of days before newborn fawns learn they have absolutely nothing to fear from the big apes who co-inhabit the territory, our noisy doors, or our noisier cars.
I must admit I am one of the ones who usually overlooks Mabon, although I do celebrate all the sabbats and esbats, but I usually push aside Mabon as I eagerly wait for Samhain.
I live next to a vineyard so every year I see them out there at night as they harvest the grapes and then we have the Pear Festival. And while this fight over whether or not the name of Kelseyville needs to be changed, I’ve decided to celebrate by giving my thanks to the land and the people who it originally belonged to.
You’ve made me curious now to know if any of these farms and vineyards do anything to celebrate the old gods or just their one God, like do they offer up part of the first harvest or what. One thing for sure this Mabon and I am definitely feeling more present and mindful.
Thanks so much for the comment, Kaily. Y’know, I used to do the same — overlook Mabon to gaze on Samhain — until I crossed the autumn equinox threshold while traveling in the British Isles. I was piling on the magical places that fall, stumbling upon the Merry Maidens stone circle in Cornwall, climbing Glastonbury Tor, hiking in the Lake District and on the Isle of Skye … that year, the equinoctial imperative finally penetrated my consciousness ;)
Good question about the rituals our wine-making community may or may not observe, not just here at Mabon, but throughout the many stages of the grape-growing year. Living and working so close to the land, I imagine people perform all sorts of personal, familial, and/or communal acts, large and small, to show respect, court fair fortune and fair weather, ensure a good harvest, and increase the odds of the year’s wines being simply exceptional.
I have long been ambivalent about the Thanksgiving Feast story. It points out how lucky the Pilgrims were, but never pays enough attention to who suffered in order to make that luck possible. (In some accounts I’ve read, the Pilgrims would not even have been able to establish a foothold in eastern Massachusetts had not the local indigenous people not been exposed to viral hepatitis by a shipwrecked sailor in the early 1610s, leading to the sudden death of about ninety percent of the locals, and clearing the way for invaders who would not have been able to intrude in any normal circumstance.)
Exactly. When I grouse about T-Day, people tell me (as if I didn’t know) that, for them, Thanksgiving is a clan-coming-together feast of affection and gratitude, so they love it. I love that about it. I don’t love that the occasion itself turns a blind eye to the very real pain it’s causing Native American clans. It’s like saying it’s ok to send all the diverse kids in our neighborhood to the Robert E. Lee elementary school because it has great standards, fine teachers, and an all-inclusive curriculum.