Not this Thanksgiving
How do you feel about Thanksgiving? How do you feel about Independence Day? What do you think about Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, even Christmas? What goes through your mind those days and weeks before they arrive? Do you even notice them as they pass by or are they just another date on the calendar?
There are markers for each holiday created by strong memories and linked to our surroundings. Things like what we experienced as children and can not be forgotten (for better or worse), anchors that tell us how to feel and what we should do.
For Thanksgiving it is the hordes of frozen turkeys in the supermarket, the plans for a big family dinner, knowing for the next few days it’s going to be leftover meat, stuffing and cranberries.
For Christmas it’s the snow (at least being very cold), Christmas music in the mall as I rush to buy presents, the family sitting on the couch listening to the Christmas story accented by crackles and pops from a blazing fire.
For the 4th of July it’s the last giant signs on the highway advertising cheap fireworks, stocking up on brats and burgers, and patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers as we all stare into the sky waiting for the finale.
But what do you do when you are pulled from those surroundings that provided you with these anchors? This is something that, after living in Japan for five years, I have begun to think about quite a bit.
Take Thanksgiving the other day. The only reason I remembered was because of a Facebook game (curse you Mafia Wars!). Then when the day arrived it felt like something was missing. I got together with some friends, we said Happy Thanksgiving, had a big dinner, but it was like drinking flat coke.
Around me were none of those things that would cue me in to the fact a special day was coming. No Turkey, no Black Friday advertisements, no plans for the whole family (or even a small part of it) to get together. So when the day finally arrived, it was just that, another day.
Christmas is coming up fast. Around me are the lights, the music, the gaiety, but it is like everything is being played to a different beat and I just can’t quite catch on. That emotional buildup that you get in the weeks leading up to the 24th (or 25th) just isn’t there. Sure everyone here is looking forward to eating Christmas cake and maybe exchanging presents but it just isn’t the same.
Holidays are important to us (whether we admit it or not). They mark a special day, something to be remembered, something to be celebrated, and when the feeling and excitement surrounding them fade we lose something. They become just another day in the procession of time marked only by the rising and setting of the sun.
Now, how to drop new anchors into the flow of time away from where it all began to bring those homeland holidays back to life? That’s a good question.
Only in Japan.
