Boston

Giving Thanks

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There are few American celebrations I can identify with… most don’t relate to anything I really know. However, Thanksgiving is something that resonates with me. Remembering why we can be thankful.

In the American history, this signifies hard times and new beginnings. Religious persecution lead to the voyage to America to pursue religious liberty. And after a slow start in Plymouth, the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of the first successful harvest. This gets celebrated every year. It’s a national holiday. In Europe we also celebrate the harvest of the year. It’s celebrated in October and I wonder of the pilgrims took this tradition with them and gave it new meaning.

Thanksgiving.. giving thanks for abundance. Often in the humdrum of life, we don’t stop often enough to say Thanks to Him who provides. We may believe that hard work got us there, and not always see the significance of giving thanks.

Over the past years I have been privileged to be in the US during this holiday. Families and friends come together, spending quality time, remembering why they are thankful. Maybe a round table saying out loud that which they are thankful for.

I wish we would pay more attention to this in Europe. To be thankful is an act of acknowledgment that what we have is not of our own making. And that is always good to be reminded of! God relishes in our giving of thanks to Him.

Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. Psalm 100:4.

We do not need to minimise the giving of thanks to just the 3rd Thursday in November. We can be thankful every day. Every day is a new gift, a new chance to make choices. But to be especially aware of this act of giving thanks once per year is wonderful.

I will certainly miss it this year, to not be in the US. However, wonderful American friends have invited us to celebrate with them in London. So don’t mind me if I am just a little teary eyed, remembering why I am grateful, and thinking back to last year, visiting Plymouth Rock… there were this remembrance started.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Rock

Boston

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These last days have been an eye opener, in regards to America history. Someone commented ‘what history’ and to be honest…so did I… after all, the country is young if you compare it to some of our European countries… how wrong I was…

I already mentioned a few things in the previous blog.. this blog I will share some more things I have learned…

We walked part of the ‘freedom trail’ with guidance from a knowledgable guide. A phrase often repeated was ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny’. This phrase was to be the beginnings of America’s independence. Characters like John Hancock, Samual Adams, James Otis and Paul Revere are the most well known names from that period. We visited their tombs, and saw some of the landmark buildings in the history of Boston. We visited the 2 ships involved in the ‘Boston Tea’ incident. We went to the North Church, where peers of them had pews. We saw the house of Paul Revere. All names and buildings I had not even previously heard of!

We went to Salem and heard how the fear for the unknown, the devil and the invaders caused mass hysteria and 19 people died by hanging, accused of being a witch. This was the only incident in America… we know many more died in Europe accused of the same. All names were exonerated, but you can’t bring people back to live!

We visited Plymouth rock, the rock where the pilgrims allegedly stepped on land. We saw the plimoth plantation, where characters from the 1600’s were keen to share their way of live…

I am saturated…. I had no idea… I feel I need to read up more… but most of all, I am now really looking forward to Thanksgiving in a couple of months. I know it’s not really a Dutch celebration.. although I have always liked the thought of acknowledging all that we can be thankful for to the One, I will celebrate this thanksgiving with a lot more knowledge of how the feast of ‘Thanksgiving’ came about!

Some other tidbits I picked up these last days:

Malcom X served in the kitchen of the Omnipark Hotel

Dunkin Donuts started in Massachusetts, there are 106 stores in Boston

The Italian district in Boston has 100 restaurants

Liberty and Freedom are 2 core American values

Boston was Home to the first US chocolate factory

The first US underground (Subway) was built here

For now: I had a blast!!!! Time to go home to St Paul.

Disguise so no one knew we were going to throw the tea overboard

History

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History is a funny thing. Each story has 2 sides, and depending on whose side you hear, it’s the perspective you get….

Let me start at the beginning…..

After having spend last week in Taiwan for work, this week Melody and I were looking forward to a trip we have been planning for months (close to a year). Yes, the timing was off, with work very busy, but plane tickets were booked, hotel and car arranged. Friends connected with….we were going to Boston! 

So Tuesday evening Mel and I drove to Chicago to catch a plane from there to Boston – saved a lot of money, even if we lost a night of sleep… I am still jet lagged anyways! This morning we set off for Boston. So excited! Our friends Kim and Marty met us at the airport, and then it was full steam ahead! A full intinery planned around…. yep… historical sides! One of my favourite activities, learning about how the American nation was established, build up, and the impacts on the original population.

Driving into Boston is like being back home in England… which I miss. It’s strange to see all these English place names, sometimes pronounced a little different than back home. Woburn, Worcester, Gloucester, Essex, Cambridge etc. We were off to the presidential library of JFK. Learning about his political rise and his election to president. He had made various trips to Europe, his father was at one time the US ambassador to Great Britain. However, some of the statements he made I could not recognise from the history taught to me in school or university. “Japan has surrendered, the end of the Second World War”…. wait… what happened to the European countries and the part of the war there? It was interesting to hear the lead up to the first bill of equality signed in 1963/4, were all people should be treated equal. Maybe that’s something to go back to when we discriminate each other due to differences in thinking, sexual orientation, religion etc! It was awesome to see and hear the inauguration speech, with the famous line ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’. It reminds me a little of church…. don’t ask what the church can do for you, but what you can do for other people… don’t go to church, but be the church.

Tomorrow we will visit the spot where the English tea was thrown overboard, as the American colony no longer wanted to pay taxes to the English without getting any benefits in return. Another side of history, the American side, will be revealed these next coming days. Am looking forward to it already!