My Mind Made Public -

I held off as long as I could ...

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

A British take on Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving I was graced with a phone call from a great friend of mine: Wendy Beech-Ward. Wendy works for Spring Harvest, she knows absolutely everyone and she’s British! Cool side story—her husband was the band manager for Boy George and the Culture Club. Just adds to her coolness doesn’t it…

Anyway, as we were talking about the future and some exciting possibilities between The Marin Foundation and the UK based Spring Harvest and Soul Survivor, she said something I never thought about before:

“Why do American’s celebrate the day that we [British] found the country?”

She said that jokingly, but either way it was an hilarious satirical comment coming from a Brit to an American guy who needs to be culturally pushed. I’ve never, ever thought about Thanksgiving from a British perspective before.

We hijacked their holiday! What's up with that? :)

Regardless, I’m thankful none the less.

Much love.
http://www.themarinfoundation.org/

5 comments:

Adam McLane said...

And here I thought they were thankful to be out of England and could express some religious freedom! :)

Unknown said...

Second graders learn that Thanksgiving is the celebration between the Indians and the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims gave thanks to God for helping them through the rough winter. When they came over from England, they were left to their own survival skills. These were not very good, so Squanto and other Indians taught them many of the survival skills that they needed including how to plant and grow their own food, hunt, fish, etc. And, yes! The Pilgrims did come over for religious freedom. England (the country) or any type of "Independence Day" had nothing to do with this celebration.

Andrew Marin said...

Woah! Guess I got this one way wrong...ouch. The bottom line was that her comment just got me thinking in a different way. Maybe I should have just kept it at that? Thanks for keepin it real with me!
:)

Adam McLane said...

Beth- man, second grade was many moons ago. Public school education!

Andy- I love those conversations with our UK friends. 4th of July is way cooler because you can say stuff like, "remember when your country owned our country? Yeah, that wasn't cool."

Andrew Marin said...

Yeah Adam...knowing Beth is intense and makes me realize the show "Are you Smarter then a 5th Grader" is way too high of a grade! She should have been my 2nd grade teacher...

And your words about 4th of July - now I'm just excited for the summer so I can bring it up! Stickin' it to the Man!!!