First Annual Dinner of Giving Thanks!

Today was the First Annual Dinner of Giving Thanks. It was delicious. My mom and step dad, my sister M., and Grandma joined the Brain and me for dinner. I've decided this is going to be an annual event on the first Sunday in November. It works out good because it's smack in between the Canadian Thanksgiving and the United States Thanksgiving, and after all Canada is just across the lake from us. (Which would give me foreign relations experience, except I can't see it from my house.) But I digress.

I liked this way better than holding a Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday. Number one is Christmas. My third favorite would be my birthday and there are only 68 shopping days until then. But this was better than Thanksgiving itself because there's no drama about having to invite family. Whatever family was available could come. Maybe next year I'll invite friends. Mom was put to work making gravy and bringing a pie, but there wasn't any rules about having to have cranberry sauce or sweet potato marshmallow casserole. I figure we'll get all those traditional side dishes when we go off to the real Thanksgiving dinner. And I'll have recipes in the next posts.

But doesn't it beg the question that shouldn't we have dinners of giving thanks regularly? Shouldn't we stop and take a moment to realize how fortunate we really are? It's not necessary for us to cook a turkey (although I do love the leftovers) and get dressed up and drink heavily and endure having to be around family (I'm speaking in generalities here and not directing the remark at any of my family in specific). But really when the economy is so bad and so many people have lost their jobs and are facing dire situations, wouldn't it be a good idea to sit down and think about what a multitude of good things we do have?