![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Eruhantalë.
Oct. 5th, 2003 10:56 pmSince my paternal grandmother died 10 years ago and the paternal side of my family are Roman catholic, we had to attend a memorial service today. Yikes. The church of Wegberg is actually very beautiful, now they restored the medieval wall-paintings and decorations, but unfortunately that had no effect on the service. It was incredibly boring - some drift about how divorce is wrong and Adam and Eve and yadda yadda. Let's remember our dear dead, and by the way, this is Thanksgiving.
I like Thanksgiving as a holiday. It has something... pure to it that most other religious holidays lack. There is no ideologic background of the "This or that Saint died today, or the Bible says this or that happened today"-sort. It's just the pure human desire to thank someone for the success of the harvest, the fruits of their work; it's pretty much intercultural; and it's simply, well, natural. Even as a non-Christian the reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving are easy to be seen (unless one is an Atheist, then of course it's pointless). In kindergarten, we would do lots of decorations for it and help to prepare the Thanksgiving service, like learning some prayers or collecting fruits. I loved it, back then, and even later I loved the fruit- and corn-decorated altar.
The only weird thing is the choice of the date - some celebrate it in September, like Mabon, strangely, the US-Americans, Canadians and British all have different Thanksgiving days, and here it's the first Sunday in October.
Anyway.
So, I like Thanksgiving, and I simply don't understand why the priest didn't chose that for the background. But nooo, it has to be some dogmatic catholic stuff on marriage and divorce. The priest forgot some of his text, and the organ player made some quite audible mistakes, and people were talking and singing in a very unenthusiastic, "Our-Father-in-Heaven-we-are-the-Borg-resistance-is-futile-Amen" way. *sigh* And I will never ever understand the complicated system of when to stand, when to sit and when to kneel. Like some slow-mo aerobic course. How I understand Martin Luther. If at least people had been a bit more enthusiastic - if at least the priest had been more enthusiastic, but even he seemed to fall asleep from his own words. Protestant priests have to take rhetoric classes, but obviously catholics don't. And the songs had partly extremely ridiculous texts. It was hard to keep a straight face, and I tried, because I really want to hurt no one's feelings.
Whatever.
Happy Thanksgiving for the Germans, or in advance for those who celebrate it some other day. Happy Eruhantalë.
Completely off-topic, but this looks as though Orlando were about to do Kata Jion. This is the very first movement. Argh, it's following me.
- - -
( Erntedank )
- - -
I like Thanksgiving as a holiday. It has something... pure to it that most other religious holidays lack. There is no ideologic background of the "This or that Saint died today, or the Bible says this or that happened today"-sort. It's just the pure human desire to thank someone for the success of the harvest, the fruits of their work; it's pretty much intercultural; and it's simply, well, natural. Even as a non-Christian the reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving are easy to be seen (unless one is an Atheist, then of course it's pointless). In kindergarten, we would do lots of decorations for it and help to prepare the Thanksgiving service, like learning some prayers or collecting fruits. I loved it, back then, and even later I loved the fruit- and corn-decorated altar.
The only weird thing is the choice of the date - some celebrate it in September, like Mabon, strangely, the US-Americans, Canadians and British all have different Thanksgiving days, and here it's the first Sunday in October.
Anyway.
So, I like Thanksgiving, and I simply don't understand why the priest didn't chose that for the background. But nooo, it has to be some dogmatic catholic stuff on marriage and divorce. The priest forgot some of his text, and the organ player made some quite audible mistakes, and people were talking and singing in a very unenthusiastic, "Our-Father-in-Heaven-we-are-the-Borg-resistance-is-futile-Amen" way. *sigh* And I will never ever understand the complicated system of when to stand, when to sit and when to kneel. Like some slow-mo aerobic course. How I understand Martin Luther. If at least people had been a bit more enthusiastic - if at least the priest had been more enthusiastic, but even he seemed to fall asleep from his own words. Protestant priests have to take rhetoric classes, but obviously catholics don't. And the songs had partly extremely ridiculous texts. It was hard to keep a straight face, and I tried, because I really want to hurt no one's feelings.
Whatever.
Happy Thanksgiving for the Germans, or in advance for those who celebrate it some other day. Happy Eruhantalë.
Completely off-topic, but this looks as though Orlando were about to do Kata Jion. This is the very first movement. Argh, it's following me.
- - -
( Erntedank )
- - -
