Being thankful for holidays...

[fajrdrako]

From Livejournal's Writer's Block today: "What is your favorite holiday and why?"

Christmas. Without a doubt. I like the philosophical background - not the Christianity of it, but the celebrating of light and life, trees and food. The present-giving and the present-giving and the traditions like stockings filled with toys and mistletoe. The carols and songs and concerts. The art. The Christmas lights - Ottawa is good for Christmas lights, and the NCC goes all out. The sentimental stories. I don't include the TV shows and movies, because I mostly haven't seen them. At which point everyone usually gasps in astonishment. But though I don't watch Christmas movies per se most of the time, I love it that there are usually new good movies which come out at Christmas - Holmes is the treat for this year. And that's extra good now, when most movies released are things I just don't want to see at all.

I like my private Christmas memories - excitement when I was a little girl: a little stuffed bear named Brownie, in the stocking hanging over my bedroom door when I was three, so it (and he) were the first things I saw when I woke up. The tin doll house when I was four, with its miniature plastic furniture.

My mother said that after I was born (in September), it was the week before Christmas when she got to take me home. Three months old, and tiny. She hoped I would look at the brightly-decorated Christmas Tree. Instead I stared at the piano. I suppose I saw lots of lights in the hospital, but not much in the way of polished dark mahogany.

My second favourite holiday is Thanksgiving, again, because I love the concept: a day for being thankful for the good things in life. I don't like religious connotations for the, but it only needs philosophical connotations: a day for appreciating what is good in life. Also, the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend is usually the most beautiful weekend of the year.

Though it's not a single holiday, I also love the celebration of birthdays. All birthdays. It's like a combination of Christmas and Thanksgiving: celebrating life - a specific life - and being thankful for that person.