Thinking about travel, and holidays

On a travel blog I follow, a recent thread was, "If you could go right now..."

Answers ranged from walking in Italy to a weekend in Las Vegas to Christmas markets in Europe.

I would probably have chosen Paris, since I was there last November. Today I even found this picture (blurry, but evocative) of the 2007 Christmas lights on the Champs Elysees.



This is the view from any bus crossing top of the boulevard, near the Arc de Triomphe. The hanging blue lights were long tubes, that contrasted with thousands of tiny white lights wrapped around tree trunks and branches. At the far end of the grand boulevard a tall Ferris wheel glittered on the Place de la Concorde.

Northern Europe has long dark evenings this time of year, but Christmas lights begin going up as soon as the All Saints/All Souls holidays are over. No Thanksgiving turkey to get in the way.

There are plenty of places a homesick American can find a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Paris (biggest one is the celebration at the American Church) but I was quite content with roast lamb at the local bistro. Although I like Thanksgiving, I have never been locked into a prescribed celebration.

My Canadian parents never fully accepted a late November celebration of a holiday they had always observed in October. "Turkey is for Christmas," my mother said - so we sometimes had pheasant or ham.

My husband had no desire to replicate his family's traditional Midwestern Thanksgivings, so our celebrations varied widely. Sometimes we went to the movies before dinner, sometimes we were at Vashon, sometimes we gathered with other families.

The Thanksgiving everyone remembers most fondly was the year we took Chinese takeout to Makapu'u Beach on Oahu, sitting on the rocks to eat after a couple of hours of swimming and body-surfing. Hawaii was digging out from the first hurricane in many years, and on the way to the beach we passed more than one family making a barbecue Thanksgiving in the yard of a roofless house. The sun was shining, the water was warm, electricity was on for most of the time - all good reasons to celebrate.

I like Thanksgiving in Transylvania, which falls the last weekend in September. It's a harvest festival, celebrated in church, and one of only four times a year that Transylvanian Unitarian churches include communion in their service. Afterwards everyone gathers for a dinner that, if you're lucky, will consist mostly of food grown locally.