18 March 2006

A Small Round Of Applause

We Brits had All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve before America was colonised, but one was a date on the Church Calendar. For the other one maybe you'd secretly peel an apple in a single strip to see the first letter of your true love's name, or look into a mirror at midnight to see his face. It was a 'thing' mostly for teenage girls, I guess, and made of dark stuff, with an element of being nearer to the other worlds, and naughty.

We had Harvest Festival, a good day for celebrating the concept of surviving another year, for having food safely harvested and stored, and again revolving around the Church.

We had a Saint for every Country in the Kingdom - St David for Wales (01 Mar), St Patrick for Ireland (17 Mar), St George for England (23 Apr) and St Andrew for Scotland (30 Nov). They were and are days for wearing something extra (like a daffodil if you're Welsh!) to signify allegiance. Maybe an extra pint down the pub would come in to it, but that's pretty much all.

What can I say, then, but God Bless America? You took our relatively quiet observance days and supersized them, even doubling Harvest (as far as the root intention behind it goes) with Thanksgiving, the one big knees up that hasn't crossed the pond and returned to us 'American style'.

You guys - you sure know how to party.

8 comments:

Jennifer said...

Yeah, we Americans sure can party, and bigger is always better, and I'm sure every one of us would rather die by our excesses than apologize for them. It's the American way!

Miss Cellania said...

You betcha, ever since the Boston tea Party! You shoulda seen the one I attended last night!

Jennifer said...

Excuse me -- test running cocomments. Installed it yesterday & just figured out today that it's sort of like birth control: it doesn't work if you set it down & forget to use it :-)

Jennifer said...

Excuse me -- test running cocomments. Installed it yesterday & just figured out today that it's sort of like birth control: it doesn't work if you set it down & forget to use it :-)

Oh, crap. That was sort of like using birth control after the fact. I'm really soilig your sheets! Sorry!

Cheryl said...

come back Zilla - and take your comments with you! LOL I mean - did you work out that on blogger you have to upload your comment, return to it, highlight it as if to copy, then glick the cocomment shortcut in your toolbar?

Oh blow this - off to your blog to answer that for myself!

:-)

P.S. I am happy to have such a naff blog post look like it got a lot of comments.
Hehehe.

Cheryl said...

come back Zilla - and take your comments with you! LOL I mean - did you work out that on blogger you have to upload your comment, return to it, highlight it as if to copy, then glick the cocomment shortcut in your toolbar?

Oh blow this - off to your blog to answer that for myself!

:-)

P.S. I am happy to have such a naff blog post look like it got a lot of comments.
Hehehe.

Marmoset said...

Lol, although tempted to look in the mirror at midnight to see my true love I was always too freaked out by CandyMan...

fineartist said...

I live confused...