Traditions Thanksgiving

I write this as I am sitting in an airport, awaiting a flight to Amsterdam. I’m off to Amsterdam to celebrate Thanksgiving. You might ask why I would celebrate an American holiday in a foreign country. Well, I have grown up knowing Thanksgiving as a holiday when families gather around the table to share a wonderful meal and to give thanks to God for the many blessings in their lives.

For me to share this meal with family, I need to travel to The Netherlands. My daughter and her husband live just outside of Amsterdam and this year, my son is at sea with the Coast Guard. So with suitcases full, my husband and I are carrying our traditions to another part of the world.

The suitcases are filled with canned pumpkin and stuffing; items my daughter was unable to find at her local supermarket. We’re carrying decorations for the Thanksgiving Day table, and I’m hoping my daughter has figured out all of the conversions from degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius. I’m also hopeful that the recipe my son-in-law found for turkey will allow him to create a familiar taste at that special meal.

Holidays have always been family time for us, so my son’s absence will be blatantly obvious. Knowing this, my daughter and I have planned a very non-traditional trip this Thanksgiving. We will be attending a German Christmas market in Dusseldorf. We came up with this idea because my fear was that our trying to recreate prior Thanksgivings might make his absence even more noticeable.

Some things we’re doing differently, but we are hanging on to others. When my children were in elementary school, we began the Thanksgiving tradition of the Jarman Thank You Jar. We took an old coffee can and decorated it. I cut a slot through the plastic lid, just large enough to slide slips of paper through. During the year, we would all take slips of paper from the pile next to the coffee can and write down events or things that we were particularly thankful for. Thanksgiving morning after we had finished eating breakfast, we would pass the Thank You Jar around and read out one by one all of the things we had been thankful for that particular year.

Sometimes the slips said “thankful I passed my Math test.” And other times they read “thankful Pop-Pop’s surgery went well.” We were thankful for big things and little things. Those precious slips just helped us to recall them. Sometimes particularly meaningful slips would end up in a book or in the Bible. This year, the Thank Yous are tucked in a ziplock bag in my carry on tote. Some traditions are just too hard to change. We’ll save the really good ones to share with my son on Christmas morning. And perhaps I’ll even add a thank you for his safe return home.

Flexible. I keep telling myself to be flexible. Those little children who used to sit on the sofa in the family room watching the Macy’s parade won’t be there this year. But I am sure that when there are new little ones sitting there intently watching the parade, there will be a Thank You in the jar for that!

I'm not for traditional marriage

I recently attended a meeting where equality in marriage was the topic. The meeting just happened to be the same day that the referendum on equal marriage was defeated in Maine. At the meeting, we watched a video about families affected by inequalities related to marriage laws. We saw how one parent was not allowed to be present at a child's doctor appointment for vaccination injections--not the legal parent. How a partner was removed from the delivery room of a hospital so that her partner could receive epidural anesthestia. How one partner's medical benefits did not cover her partner...because they weren't married. All these rights same sex couples are denied, but privileges that my husband and I shared. Because we are married.

But what makes us special. Why do we receive rights that other people in this country do not? Just because we are one man and one woman? One of my family members has been in a one woman, one man relationship.. several times, both married and not. What givers her the right to have this privilege and then choose to dissolve it? Isn't marriage about one commitment? Isn't that really what makes marriage work? One commitment...whether it be between one man and one woman, two men or two women. Commitment makes marriage. Two people in one committed relationship.

Opponents of equal marriage support traditional marriage. What's that? Arranged marriages? Because that was long the tradition. Is it marriage with a dowry? Because that was also traditional. Is it marriage for political convenience? That surely was traditional throughout history.

Traditions change. In Holland and the UK, and even in some states in our grand union, recent "traditional" marriages have included same sex marriage. Traditions change, but equality doesn't.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Is that the tradition of our declaration of independence or is it our truth? Because our definition of equal certainly has gone through some changes over the years. Or is our belief that all men are created equal something we are willing to stand up for and demand that it be upheld?

I'm not a proponent of traditional marriage. I believe we should change our current traditions relating to marriage and opt for equality in marriage. If all men are created equal then we need to insure equal rights for all.

Teaching History or Consumption?

Financial Times recently ran an article about American Girls' addition of a homeless American girl. When Pleasant Rowland started American Girl, her idea was to use dolls and books to teach young girls about their counterparts in American history. The story lines were created to teach about history and what girls did. The dolls and books were a reaction to Mattel’s Barbie and Rowland’s belief that Barbie did not reflect reality. Mattel needs to take a lesson from the creator of American Girl and return the toy and books to their original theme.

American Girl of Today teaches our young girls to over consume. The company emphasizes over accessorizing imitations of the "reality" we see on television and in the media. The latest attempt by Mattel in its creation of a homeless American Girl doll with accessories and the ability to spend the afternoon at the salon really takes the cake. Why can’t Mattel encourage young girls to read the books and donate the $95 cost of the doll to a homeless shelter? Why must the toy mogul push sales of a doll with accessories to teach lessons about becoming “compassionate and loving people?”


Mattel’s American Girl has become an 18 inch vinyl Barbie and has lost touch with reality and its historical routes. As a former faithful supporter of American Girl, I look to new products to teach young girls and am working diligently to make sure those types of products are available.