Isobel loves any and every holiday that comes her way, and now that Halloween is over she is excited to celebrate Thanksgiving. Only, she seems to forget what Thanksgiving is about from year to year. Eventually I’ll get into our cultural myth of the Pilgrims and the friendly Native peoples and the meal that was shared, but right now that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to her. In recent times, we celebrate the meaning of Thanksgiving as a literal “giving thanks,” but I think there’s also something to be said about the nature of harvest dinners and the simple fact that we are celebrating having enough food to eat. We take this for granted as a culture, but up until more recent times starvation, or the threat of it, was a part of every human life.
As the holidays are upon us and the season of giving is at hand, I’d like to take a moment to link back to a post I wrote last year about food pantry donations. In it are ways you can help a food pantry beyond donating an old can of green beans no one seems to want to eat. As we celebrate with feasts and family it’s impossible not to think about those who have neither. If a donation isn’t in your budget, the guide I wrote should help you find an inexpensive way to give that will help enrich a life nutritionally. Most of us have so much–it is a shame to allow others to hunger.
