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Jack-O-Lanterns and Thanksgiving Turkeys in UruguayThis forum post has messages dated from 11/30/11 through 12/01/11, please be sure to read all the messages. If you feel it is old or outdated, please follow up with a question or comment and someone may be able to update it, or reply with newer information if you have it.
| Jack-O-Lanterns and Thanksgiving Turkeys in Uruguay Having just enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving holiday here in chilly Wisconsin - where even our autumn temps fall below Uruguayan winter temps – it occurs to me that most of our major holidays here in the US either have their roots in pagan based celebrations or are cleverly disguised religious or political holidays that fulfill the same intrinsic need in us for natural order. Our US Thanksgiving is an obvious example of a basic fall harvest holiday where folks rejoice at the abundance. Halloween celebrates the shift from the summer to fall and from life to death. Christmas is merely the solstice celebration harnessed by the Church to do her bidding. It’s a time when we shift from the lengthening of the night to the lengthening of the day, a time when we bring in an evergreen tree and deck it out in lights to hold back the longest of nights. Easter is a celebration of spring and rebirth, of having survived our wintery cocoons and of rising from them like daffodils in the springtime sun. I can think of all sorts of reasons for why Saint Valentine’s Day or Groundhog’s day or our Fourth of July all work so well at their ordained time of year in the northern hemisphere, but why on the other side of the equator do folks cling to so many of the same holidays and celebrate them in such similar ways? To me, so many of the northern hemisphere holidays seem a bit bunk when celebrated out of season. As for me I won’t be bringing my parent’s holiday traditions with me to Uruguay. I will likely be celebrating the winter solstice just as I do now, but in June rather than December. I will probably not refrain from cooking a monstrously large dinner to commemorate the fall harvest - but of course this won’t be happening in the third week of November. Baby chicks and bunnies will still most likely mark my springtime - and I imagine without the crucifixion of Christ looming everywhere this will be just that much more joyous. Now, ringing in the New Year at the height of summer - that I get!!!? Put me in Punta del Este with a vodka gimlet on New Year’s Eve and I won’t be anything but agreeable and wholly appreciative of that holiday’s Uruguayan interpretation. I cannot even get my head around a celebration like Carnival, but I am looking forward to it helping me better understand Uruguayan culture. Dan |
Comment #112/01/11 10:37Playa Honda, Montevideo, Uruguay | "Thanksgiving in Uruguay"
The oddest thing for me was the heat. I don't ever remember celebrating Thanksgiving with air conditioning, even in Texas. And we celebrated on Friday, because it's no holiday here. But we had a large group of friends, everybody brought something, and you can get smallish (4-5.5 kilos = 9-12 pounds) frozen turkeys at the local Tienda Inglesa stores. The small turkeys are probably the only ones to fit in the smallish ovens here.Maybe here we are giving thanks for the beginning of summer (-like weather). Sunday was a big beach day here - about 100 times as many people on the beach as any other day this spring. |
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