Posts tagged with holiday.

Thanksgiving - it’s all relative

Bryce Warnes, October 14, 2009 at 11:08 AM

 

I was sitting in the Swartz Bay ferry terminal, waiting to cross back from Vancouver Island to the mainland. It was standing room only, and most people were using whatever spare room was available to carve out niches on the floor. When I got there, there were more people lined up than I thought the building could hold. The queue stretched to the parking lot; wailing infants clutched their mothers' hands, old men hunched under burdens of rags and string. Carrion birds circled in the grey sky above and a cold wind blew.

 

It's like BC Ferries exists in some Twilight Zone, a netherworld where Murphy's Law applies to every aspect of life. The next ferry was cancelled for unspecified reasons. Another was out of commission because it somehow caught fire last week. About half an hour ago, after the waiting area had filled near to capacity, the fire alarm went off and the building had to be evacuated. Down the stairs with our luggage, out into the cold again, where everyone who smoked immediately began to do so. It was a brief respite for the nicotine addicts: Three quarters of a cigarette later and it was back up three flights of stairs and into the presence of wailing infants and airborne pathogens. 

 

Thanksgiving is supposed to be one of those profound holidays where you savour life's bounties and extend goodwill towards others. Sometimes the message gets crowded out by the prospect of guilt-free gluttony, but when it's embedded in the name of the holiday it's hard to ignore. Christmas can become X-mas and Easter just another excuse to gorge on chocolate, but Thanksgiving has made a smooth transition to secular status. Even if you're not thanking any deity in particular, anyone but the most ardent pessimist can think of something they're thankful for in a general sense.

 

I've talked to Americans who think it's strange that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October. I think the timing is perfect. This is the time of year when things start dying, when gardens go to sleep and trees get naked. The nights turn cold and the sun gets weak and winter doesn't seem like such a distant prospect any more. What better time of the year to sit down to a meal with family and remember everything you have to be happy for?

 

And what better time to remember how little others have? That's Thanksgiving's secret weapon, that's what makes it more than a turkey Bacchanalia. Because the moment you say "I'm thankful I have a home," you're forced to acknowledge that others don't. A few nights ago I was downtown late with some friends, trying to find a way back to campus before the buses stopped running. There was a cold wind, no means of transportation in sight, and we were haggard from an evening spent moshing. We found a guy waiting at a stop and asked him if he knew when the bus would be arriving. He asked us where we were headed, and when we told him, he gave us precise directions on how we could get there - if we hurried. And before we ran off he asked if any of us had any spare change, because he didn't have fare for the bus, and the shelter he was going to was in North Vancouver.

 

I gave him what I had in my pockets with that weird blend of guilt and empathy I always feel when trying to help out someone living on the streets. A feeling born of a gross disparity in circumstances, filler emotion for a situation I (perhaps willingly) don't understand well, and probably never will. It made the late-night discomforts of some university students returning home from a concert seem very small indeed. And it's the same feeling I had this weekend, when I sat down to a warm dinner with my family - and gave thanks.

Tagged with nondenominational, homeless, thanksgiving, thanks, grateful, holiday | Comments (2) |