I've often wished we had something like Thanksgiving in the UK; it seems such a wholesome occasion.
October and November are my least favourite months of the whole year and I do try to embrace the whole autumn vibe. I have a little display on a table in our lounge here, with a pumpkin (artificial), acorns (also artificial), and some little ornaments including a rat and a pair of hedgehogs and a wooden toadstool. Today while out in Nearby Town I purchased a garland of autumn leaves (yes... artificial...) and have wound a string of lights around it. I am not sure yet where it's going to go and have currently draped it over one of the units in our kitchen/family room.
Poor little Thanksgiving. It needs more love. But that can be its own thread.
Actually, one of the things I love about Thanksgiving is that there isn’t lots of . . . commercialization? tat? . . . to go with it. It’s about gathering family and friends around the table. And perhaps a parade and football game or two.
The simplicity of it is part of the charm of it. Of course, putting the meal together may be anything but simple, but it’s something I really look forward to.
I think leaning into the harvest aspects of it more than we seem to do at the moment would be cool. You know, decorations with cornucopia, and if not actual vegetables (a lot of of this is going to totally depend on the climate where one lives – here in Florida it’s not really great to have a lot of vegetables just sitting out, even decoratively) then cutouts of them. I think part of my ideal is kind of the way you would go into elementary school (for those people in the UK and I literally do not know how things are broken up in some ways, this would basically be from ages 6 to 10, five if you’re including kindergarten) at least back in my day in the 1970s and there would be lovely decorations of leaves and fall colors and things like that. (I’m very happy to dispense with the pictures of the Indians and the pilgrims…) Turkeys and ears of corn and squashes… before I got the cats, I was able to put some hard winter squash up on the kitchen counter decoratively, and those would last, and I could then eat them when I felt like it, but unfortunately with the cats, I think they would get knocked over into the sink, possibly breaking dishes, or maybe knock somewhere else and broken, etc. etc. etc. because well, you know, cats. The lovely dark green and orange of acorn squash, and so on. I tend to think that with the greater separation and distance from farming and things like that, things to remind me, and I’m sure others, about harvest season and things are particularly nice for that time of year.
But I will start a thread on that later. At the moment, onto Halloween! Speaking of which I’m going to look at an episode of Elena of Avalor on Disney+ that has to do with Dia de los Muertos while eating breakfast just now (yes at 12:33 PM, but I’m still working on it…).
I've often wished we had something like Thanksgiving in the UK; it seems such a wholesome occasion.
October and November are my least favourite months of the whole year and I do try to embrace the whole autumn vibe. I have a little display on a table in our lounge here, with a pumpkin (artificial), acorns (also artificial), and some little ornaments including a rat and a pair of hedgehogs and a wooden toadstool. Today while out in Nearby Town I purchased a garland of autumn leaves (yes... artificial...) and have wound a string of lights around it. I am not sure yet where it's going to go and have currently draped it over one of the units in our kitchen/family room.
I thought you guys had harvest festival/harvest home, held nearest the harvest moon? And Lammastide?
Of course you could start your own tradition too, or borrow from others as seems appropriate for your tastes. ❤️ I love the decorations you describe! :-)
I've often wished we had something like Thanksgiving in the UK; it seems such a wholesome occasion.
October and November are my least favourite months of the whole year and I do try to embrace the whole autumn vibe. I have a little display on a table in our lounge here, with a pumpkin (artificial), acorns (also artificial), and some little ornaments including a rat and a pair of hedgehogs and a wooden toadstool. Today while out in Nearby Town I purchased a garland of autumn leaves (yes... artificial...) and have wound a string of lights around it. I am not sure yet where it's going to go and have currently draped it over one of the units in our kitchen/family room.
I thought you guys had harvest festival/harvest home, held nearest the harvest moon? And Lammastide?
Yes - living in a small village as we do now there was a Harvest Supper in the village hall last weekend, I can't remember the last time I was anywhere that celebrated Harvest in any way apart from the odd harvest-type hymn/song in church. Lammastide isn't a "thing" in the circles I move in and never has been. I don't think a lot of people would even know when it is.
Poor little Thanksgiving. It needs more love. But that can be its own thread.
Actually, one of the things I love about Thanksgiving is that there isn’t lots of . . . commercialization? tat? . . . to go with it. It’s about gathering family and friends around the table. And perhaps a parade and football game or two.
The simplicity of it is part of the charm of it. Of course, putting the meal together may be anything but simple, but it’s something I really look forward to.
Me too.
And interestingly all four adult Beaky daughters feel the same way. Because we're in the UK and the grandchildren have school we have moved our celebration to the Saturday but we're already planning the gathering.
And Halloween costumes are also already planned by said grandchildren for two weeks time and the older ones have decorated the front of their house.
Back in our evangelical days we were very iffy about Halloween, something I'm ashamed of now, and autumn is my least favourite season so I try and embrace the whole thing. Our son and his husband love it and their decorations go up at the earliest opportunity.
Where we lived before we hadn't had trick or treaters for years but apparently it's a thing here so I'll be stocking up on sweets over the next couple of weeks.
One thing I wish for this time every year is a new/different film adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I've enjoyed that spooky story since I was a boy, and it seems there hasn't been a notable big screen treatment of it since Tim Burton's film from 1999. Ah well, maybe next year.
One thing I wish for this time every year is a new/different film adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I've enjoyed that spooky story since I was a boy, and it seems there hasn't been a notable big screen treatment of it since Tim Burton's film from 1999. Ah well, maybe next year.
I do like the 1940s Disney short animated adaptation. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I am a little bit surprised to think that other than the Tim Burton one there haven’t been a bunch of others. I mean, there’s been a bunch of pumpkin-headed monster movies…
We adopted our rescue cat, Mochi, when she was 8 and she was brought up in rural area and loves climbing tall trees. Our Christmas tree is firmly fixed to the ground.
Re cats and decorations--our family hung things from the ceiling. Including a full-scale live Christmas tree...
That sounds (1) very complicated and (2) like a challenge for the cats. Just imagining them trying to leap to it…
We began hanging it from a ceiling hook every year, as it was much easier than trying to stand a live tree so it would look straight--and then having to water through the lower branches. We just swung the whole tree to one side out of the way and set a fresh water bowl there. One year the whole thing did come down with a huge crash, ornaments and all!
I’m hoping to finally start putting up decorations today, at very least the Beistle cardboard cut-outs that I have. I might even set up my Super7 Universal monster action figures on a shelf, but we will see. (Some are in 1970s neon fluorescent “Day-Glo” costume colors—if people remember that sort of thing, the colors were often nothing like the colors of the monsters in the movies, and very bright colors—some are like that but also glow in the dark, some just glow in the dark, some are translucent—I actually don’t have any of those figures that are the colors from the movies or in “realistic” colors. I love the weird stuff. And with some black light, some of them really light up as well. I’ve also got some Japanese Pose Skeleton figures in various colors if I can find them…)
All this makes me think back to when I was a member of a very hardline reformed Baptist church. I'd gone to a neighbourhood bonfire with a few fireworks, and afterwards called in on the home of one of the elders. To find their curtains drawn against any sight of the fire/rockets as Pagan.
It was one of the pointers to the fact that when push came to Calvinist shove I was on the side of pagan.
All this makes me think back to when I was a member of a very hardline reformed Baptist church. I'd gone to a neighbourhood bonfire with a few fireworks, and afterwards called in on the home of one of the elders. To find their curtains drawn against any sight of the fire/rockets as Pagan.
It was one of the pointers to the fact that when push came to Calvinist shove I was on the side of pagan.
As you may know, CS Lewis described himself as “a converted pagan living among apostate Puritans.”
I watched the final classic universal monster movie with my friend Greg last night, “the creature walk among us.” Really hoping to get some decorations up today…
Comments
October and November are my least favourite months of the whole year and I do try to embrace the whole autumn vibe. I have a little display on a table in our lounge here, with a pumpkin (artificial), acorns (also artificial), and some little ornaments including a rat and a pair of hedgehogs and a wooden toadstool. Today while out in Nearby Town I purchased a garland of autumn leaves (yes... artificial...) and have wound a string of lights around it. I am not sure yet where it's going to go and have currently draped it over one of the units in our kitchen/family room.
I think leaning into the harvest aspects of it more than we seem to do at the moment would be cool. You know, decorations with cornucopia, and if not actual vegetables (a lot of of this is going to totally depend on the climate where one lives – here in Florida it’s not really great to have a lot of vegetables just sitting out, even decoratively) then cutouts of them. I think part of my ideal is kind of the way you would go into elementary school (for those people in the UK and I literally do not know how things are broken up in some ways, this would basically be from ages 6 to 10, five if you’re including kindergarten) at least back in my day in the 1970s and there would be lovely decorations of leaves and fall colors and things like that. (I’m very happy to dispense with the pictures of the Indians and the pilgrims…) Turkeys and ears of corn and squashes… before I got the cats, I was able to put some hard winter squash up on the kitchen counter decoratively, and those would last, and I could then eat them when I felt like it, but unfortunately with the cats, I think they would get knocked over into the sink, possibly breaking dishes, or maybe knock somewhere else and broken, etc. etc. etc. because well, you know, cats. The lovely dark green and orange of acorn squash, and so on. I tend to think that with the greater separation and distance from farming and things like that, things to remind me, and I’m sure others, about harvest season and things are particularly nice for that time of year.
But I will start a thread on that later. At the moment, onto Halloween! Speaking of which I’m going to look at an episode of Elena of Avalor on Disney+ that has to do with Dia de los Muertos while eating breakfast just now (yes at 12:33 PM, but I’m still working on it…).
Oh, I’m sorry when you mentioned liking Looney Tunes I assumed those were included… No worries then! :-)
I thought you guys had harvest festival/harvest home, held nearest the harvest moon? And Lammastide?
Of course you could start your own tradition too, or borrow from others as seems appropriate for your tastes. ❤️ I love the decorations you describe! :-)
We're having a Harvest Lunch at St Pete's, admittedly a bit late, on 1st November.
Me too.
And interestingly all four adult Beaky daughters feel the same way. Because we're in the UK and the grandchildren have school we have moved our celebration to the Saturday but we're already planning the gathering.
And Halloween costumes are also already planned by said grandchildren for two weeks time and the older ones have decorated the front of their house.
Where we lived before we hadn't had trick or treaters for years but apparently it's a thing here so I'll be stocking up on sweets over the next couple of weeks.
I do like the 1940s Disney short animated adaptation. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I am a little bit surprised to think that other than the Tim Burton one there haven’t been a bunch of others. I mean, there’s been a bunch of pumpkin-headed monster movies…
That sounds (1) very complicated and (2) like a challenge for the cats. Just imagining them trying to leap to it…
We began hanging it from a ceiling hook every year, as it was much easier than trying to stand a live tree so it would look straight--and then having to water through the lower branches. We just swung the whole tree to one side out of the way and set a fresh water bowl there. One year the whole thing did come down with a huge crash, ornaments and all!
It was one of the pointers to the fact that when push came to Calvinist shove I was on the side of pagan.
As you may know, CS Lewis described himself as “a converted pagan living among apostate Puritans.”