Thanksgiving day and Pestemal Placemats
Preparations for “Thanksgiving day” which is going to be celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November in all states of US as they do every year have already been started a week ago. The thanksgiving meal which gathers people from any religion, any socio-cultural structure and nationality together with their family in US is the only cultural holiday of USA.
Thanksgiving Day, which is a holiday that is celebrated in USA and Canada to render thanks for the harvest and all of the blessings through the year, was celebrated in a harvest festival that lasted for three days between red Indians and British people in US’s Plymouth town of Massachusetts state in 1621 for the first time.
According to the legend; a few British settlers who set foot on the American continent one day went to hunt some fowls and they hunt so many fowls that about fifty English people ate it through the whole week. A group of around 90 native people from Wampanoag came to the camp and the joined British people for the meal. Even though both sides didn’t know each other’s languages but they were able to communicate by using body language and it lifted the foundations of peace until the Battle of King Philip began in 1675.
The 50 British immigrants who settled for the first time in the city of Plymouth were devout Christians called 'pilgrims' and their celebrations were held in many churches as different from worldly celebrations. The first official Thanksgiving Day celebration was held in city of Charlestown in 1671. It has been celebrated since 1671. In 1863 the President Abraham Lincoln suggested to make Thanksgiving Day a National Holiday, but this suggestion was finalized in 1941 in a congress and the last Thursday of every November every year has been celebrated as Thanksgiving Day National Holiday.
There are different holidays and festivals that bring societies and families together and boost unity and solidarity in different countries all over the world. The Thanksgiving Day which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November every year is the most important social holiday.
It brings people from different ages, genders and religions together on a table which presents turkey, mash, blue berry sauce and pumpkin in syrup. It reminds us remaining together is essential in societies in which individualization is getting more common. It provides us an opportunity to render our thanks to God for the felicity that God has given us and to share a meal with people in need and remember that we all are a piece of a whole and that nature is every important to us.
I was at a vacation in Ftlauderdale on the last Thanksgiving Day and I was a guest at old Vivien’s house that I met there with my friend Sarah, the bookseller on the corner of the hotel that I stayed; Jackson and homeless Peter with whom Vivien met during grocery shopping. We all came from different pasts, different cultures and the thing that brought us all together was the table that Vivien prepared with delicious foods with a nice conversation. Certainly the placemats of pestemal.com which colored our table garnished our table wonderfully.
Vivien, a 97-year-old woman who came to earth in 1919, was like a walking history. Vivien's grandfather came from British colonies who first migrated to US. Vivien’s grandfather fell a martyr during North-South wars and Vivien’s childhood was full of stories about US history told by her grandmother who was widowed when she was 18. She was a real American who celebrates Thanksgiving Day in the best way and she was complaining about people who only see it as a regular holiday to have a vacation, but it is a Thanksgiving holiday that keeps society together and values spirituality, that helps people to share the same love table with people who have different culture and history background. I met Vivien at the bookstore at the street that I stayed. Even though he is very old, she looked like she had the energy of an 18-year-old young lady. She must have realized that she came to me with the famous quote of Henry James “Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?” and she told us about her life experiences and she gave us Henry James’ book Portrait of a Lady as a gift. Naturally, I told her about pestemal.com. I said that I would like to give her a present one of the pestemal dresses, vests, ponchos, round Turkish towels and pestemal placemat examples on our Instagram page and she told me not to forget to bring them with me to the Thanksgiving Day meal that she would especially prepare for me and she invited us over for that amazing dinner.
Besides the invitation at Vivien’s house at that night was the first Thanksgiving meal that I had ever participated and it was also the most interesting meal of my entire life. The dinner in which people from different life styles became very meaningful with the stories that Vivien told us.