November 6, 2007

• A Worthy Holiday Tradition

  Some background: besides Easter, my favorite holiday has to be Thanksgiving. I once saw an info package for college students who were preparing to leave India for a course of study in America, which described Thanksgiving as a "high holy day celebrated by a feast with close family members." At first I laughed because so few Americans consider Thanksgiving a "holy" day or at least do not celebrate it with anything like a traditional American understanding of "holiness" in mind. But think about it: Americans do go to great lengths, make surprising sacrifices, to be with their families on Thanksgiving day. It is the sort of commitment that normally applies only to very important religious events in cultures like Hindu/Buddhist India or many others around the world. And the "feast" bit is spot on.

  If we Americans were to add God to our Thanksgiving, and really made it a "holy" day, what might that look like? A prayer before the feast? A round of toasts after the feast?

  How about helping the less fortunate to feast as well?

  My fellow Xtracyclist "Tone" has been combining his love of biking, his career as a bike messenger, and his concern for the less fortunate for eight years now, and makes me long to join him in his happy madness.

  Here is his description of it:
  Many People probably do not know what Cranksgiving is, so I will describe it briefly. Cranksgiving is an open-course bicycle race where riders go to different supermarkets and get one item of food at each store, then after visiting about four or five stores they go to the finish and all the food is donated to a soup kitchen or food bank.

  I started Cranksgiving over eight years ago among the messenger community in New York City, but now that I moved to York, PA I am going to be running it for the ninth year in a row with non-messengers. Fortunately, a friend of mine back in NYC has stepped up to take over Cranksgiving there to keep the tradition going. Also, a messenger couple I am friends with in LA will be organizing their own version for the seventh year in a row. Cranksgiving has also been set up by various people I have known in Chicago, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin!

  I will spare you further details, but If you care to learn more, you can check out a web site I set up to present the first eight years of Cranksgiving as they were organized by me in New York City:
  http://www.moon-shine.net/cranksgiving/
  Also, if you want to check out the flyer I designed for this year's Cranksgiving in York, PA, I posted it as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file here:
  http://www.moon-shine.net/cranksgiving/Cranksgiving-YorkFlyer.pdf
  .And if anyone in NYC wants to ride in the Cranksgiving race "under new management" there, then here is the NYC flyer:
  http://www.nybma.com/images_flyers/cranksgiving2007flyer.jpg
  
  I'm going to search the web for something about Cranksgiving in LA, and hope that he meant Los Angeles, not Louisiana.

  Here's to creative celebration of holidays! "Skol!"

  • 2:30 pm
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