Bringing in the Harvest
To all our American readers, I and the rest of the Lifehack team wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings today.
I wanted to avoid the typical, clichéd, count-your-blessings-what-are-you lot-thankful-for posts. You lot all know that. Grade school kids know that. Heck, the unborn already know that. Then let'south take it every bit a given that you're securely considering your blessings and what you lot accept to be thankful for today. At least during the commercials, if nobody'due south yelling.
(Non-Us'ers may not be aware of how nosotros celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US. Start, there'southward enough food to feed a minor state – weird nutrient, though, food nosotros don't consume any other time of the twelvemonth except possibly Christmas: turkey – deep-fried, roasted, or blimp with a chicken that's stuffed with a duck – stuffing, cranberry sauce, sugariness potatoes, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, gravy, and something odd that an aunt or great-grandmother comes out of retirement in one case a twelvemonth to cook. While that's all getting magically cooked by our mothers, aunts, and grannies, the rest of the family either a) watches a large American football game, b) argues viciously, or c) alternates betwixt "a" and "b".)
Simply what'south got me thinking today is not so much the "thanksy" part of Thanksgiving, but the timing. Thanksgiving is, first and foremost, a harvest festival. That's what the Pilgrims were supposedly giving thanks for – their kickoff harvest in this new land. Every agricultural society in the globe has a similar festival. After the crops are in and the hay laid up and the grain stored and the herds brought in and the work of the farm is done, there's a festival, an opportunity to thank any god or gods a people consults on such matters and to celebrate the terminate of another year'due south hard work and to prepare for the quiet months to come.
Ironically, Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the US but as the agrestal lifestyle it celebrates was inbound its last reject. It was Abraham Lincoln who made Thanksgiving a national vacation in 1863, as the Ceremonious War which gave the US's industrial revolution its running start raged. After the Civil War, farming would exist increasingly industrialized, and the vast bulk of America's population would leave the farm and migrate to the city, to lives of factory and service work. Today, fewer than 2% of Americans piece of work in agriculture.
Which is to say that the majority of u.s.a. lead lives that are no longer defined by the annual cycle of planting and harvesting, summer hurry and winter quietude. Our harvests are no longer brought in every Autumn; instead, we sow and we reap throughout the year.
What strikes me about Thanksgiving, then, is that this is a vacation virtually finishing, near congratulating yourself and your community for a job well done. The Thanksgiving story with the Pilgrims and the Indians is a myth, of class, a story we tell ourselves to give ourselves some kind of grounding in the world, to explain who we are. But it'south a good myth – information technology tells of a people who looked at what they'd done and realized that they'd accomplished something. They were then excited almost what they'd washed that they couldn't resist showing off a little, inviting their neighboring Indians to see (much like thousands of Americans will spend this night giddy with excitement over the new widescreen television they've installed in the living room for tomorrow'southward game, knowing that there friends and family volition encounter that they've accomplished something).
Information technology'south of import to celebrate our accomplishments like that. Information technology'south likewise bad that in today's world of cool reserve and ironic disengagement, too often we downplay our achievements, even to ourselves. We resist sharing our triumphs with others, for fear of being seen every bit bragging, boastful, "likewise big for our britches", a show-off.
This is unfortunate because the festival non just marked the cease of the harvest, it gave farmers the energy and incentive they needed to slog though the dreadfully difficult work of disposed and reaping their crops. We should allow ourselves the same benefit, just instead we sap away our motivation by downplaying the things that are most of import to the states.
I guess what I'm maxim boils down to this: while nosotros're giving thank you tomorrow for a harvest that nosotros didn't bring in tomorrow, maybe we should be thinking of the harvest we did bring in. And maybe we should be giving ourselves permission to have a lilliputian Thanksgiving throughout the year, to larn from the Pilgrims and marker our achievements as they happen – and share the bounty with our families and neighbors. Count your blessings if you must, but be certain to count your successes in the list, the projects you've completed, the steps both large and small you lot've taken towards your goals, and aye, your own harvests.
Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/bringing-in-the-harvest.html
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