Thanksgiving thoughts

I love this time of year. There's just something about November that fills me with such joy.

When I think about November, I think of dark evenings in elementary school, in which my brother is listening to music on our computer, our felt newspaper-filled turkey is sitting somewhere in the living room, and our cornucopia decoration is filled with fake vegetables of some kind.

In November, all the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray, but it's not quite yet a winter's day. Even if it snows, you know there's still a good chance of decently warm days returning, if that's what you like. And if you like snowy days, then you know on sunny days that it could soon snow again.

There's a certain brisk bareness all around. Most of the trees have lost most (but not all) of their leaves, but they usually aren't covered with snow. Halloween decorations are gone, but Christmas decorations aren't (usually) up yet. There's just this crisp clearness and cleanness to the time.

I can't decide whether I like Thanksgiving because I like November, or whether I like November because I like Thanksgiving. But I adore them both.

While some people are listening to Christmas music at this time (and thereby diluting the merry emotions associated with such music), I listen to Thanksgiving music. It fills me with such joy to listen to it. Many people are skeptical of Thanksgiving music existing, but by the end of the week, my Thanksgiving playlist should have 67 songs:
Mormon Tabernacle Choir: I just ordered a CD this week entitled The Great Thanksgiving, which hasn't yet arrived yet but has 21 songs. I think it's an older recording, which tend not to be as good, but hopefully it will at least have music you can hear (unlike many of their newer recordings). I also have three Thanksgiving songs sung in general conference, and their "For the Beauty of the Earth" from their Consider the Lilies album.
Craig Duncan: I don't know who this is, except that I bought his Thanksgiving album, We Gather Together: 14 Thanksgiving Hymns. It seems to be instrumental folk. (I think folk is the best genre of music. I attended a concert of the BYU folk ensemble this week, and of all the BYU concerts I've attended, the folk ones are hands down the best. Folk is great because it's versatile. There's rock folk, pop folk, country folk, traditional folk, and so on. I like almost all of it.) This album seems to be easy-listening folk, which isn't my favorite, but Thanksgiving music is hard to come by. Since this is new to me, it doesn't have all the strong Thanksgiving emotions attached yet, but I hope that in future it will.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving: I have watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving every year since 1999, so it is strongly associated with Thanksgiving in my mind. I always thought a soundtrack of it would be nice. Although an official soundtrack has never been made, a few years ago they found some of Vince Guaraldi's original recordings and have released them on various CDs, so I have been able to find all but two of the songs from the TV special. I have ten songs, although two of them are repeats from different CDs. I also have a cover of the "Little Birdie" song (which isn't a Thanksgiving song itself, but because it's on the Thanksgiving special, I count it).
Hymns 91-95: I have those abysmal recordings from lds.org (both vocal and instrumental), but hey, it's free Thanksgiving music. I also have three other recordings of "For the Beauty of the Earth"--one by an annoying a cappella group Eclipse and two by the Lower Lights (one album version and one live version).
Other songs: I also have a few other songs--a cheesy song called "Thanksgiving Day" by a BYUI instructor named Kory Kunz, an introductory piano piece called "Sliced  Turkey," and that ridiculous but culturally amusing "It's Thanksgiving" song from last year.

Now, as you can see, the quality of my Thanksgiving music may not be the best. But I'll tolerate a little lack of quality for the sake of powerful Thanksgiving emotions. (Besides, it's still better than a lot of Christmas music!)

And if you think this is a lot, I still know of more music I could add to my Thanksgiving playlist, but I've added enough for this year. (I need to start budgeting my money better. Today is day one.) But there will be no Adam Sandler or "Alice's Restaurant" for me--too inappropriate.

This year I learned that most historians who have done their research don't believe that the Pilgrims actually wore buckles as we see in pictures. It sounds like they haven't found any buckle artifacts, and it sounds like buckles weren't popular until later. But it sounds like they existed, so they could have worn them but probably didn't. But buckles have become such an iconic image of Thanksgiving. A 5k description for Thanksgiving Point describes the race clothes as "An iconic (and historically inaccurate) giant buckle hat or bonnet and a long-sleeved, cotton tee styled to look like a jacket or dress." It seems that if you're going for a historically accurate Pilgrim, you should leave off the buckle, but if you're going for a Thanksgiving Pilgrim, by golly, you'd better include that buckle!

I don't think that the lack of existence precludes something from being a holiday symbol. I don't think that cornucopias ever existed. Any cornucopias that exist, exist only because of the symbol, not the other way around. 

(But eight-pointed snowflakes? Eww.)

But I think that sometimes historians want to say things simply to shock or make themselves appear smart. There are some historians who say there was no turkey at the first Thanksgiving. Umm, were they there? William Bradford himself says they had turkeys. I'm going to trust someone who was there, instead of some untrustworthy historian. If you said turkey was not the main dish, that would most likely be correct--but to say there was no turkey is idiotic. 

Besides, turkeys are a New-World resource that the Pilgrims would have encountered, just like pumpkins and maize. 

I am so excited for Thanksgiving next week. I hope to finish most of my homework before Thanksgiving so that I can just relax for those few days.