In the United States, we will celebrate Thanksgiving this week.
Thanksgiving is typically a time for gathering of loved ones and being grateful for all that we have.
Many cultures have a holiday or festival for expressing gratitude.
In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday each November. Ways the day is commemorated include: gathering loved ones together, giving to charity, enjoying parades and sporting events and consuming a large meal, which traditionally includes foods like turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
Other celebrations around the world are made to give thanks and mark the harvest season.
Here are five other Thanksgiving-like holidays around the globe.
The Yam Festival
In Ghana and Nigeria the Yam Festival, dedicated to yams, as the name indicates.
The festival is held when the yam harvest is ripe – typically in August or September – at the end of the rainy season and includes a big feast. In Ghana, a boy is chosen to lead a parade by carrying the best yams, and Nigeria’s celebration features public wrestling matches and music.
Water Buffalo Racing
In Thailand, each October, farmers travel to Thailand’s Chonburi province to participate in a decades-old water buffalo racing festival. The race is a celebration for rice farmers before the harvest.
Pongal – Painted Cows for a Four-Day Harvest
In India, and elsewhere by Tamils worldwide a four-day festival called Pongal is celebrated in Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India. Pongal, from the Tamil word “to boil,” is a thanksgiving to nature. The festival is held in January and February when rice and other cereals, sugarcane and turmeric are harvested. The popular Hindu festival includes singing, dancing, painting and decorating cattle, among other traditions.
Mid-Autumn Mooncakes
In China and throughout Asia, the Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on the 15th of the eighth lunar month. The holiday originated with the Northern Song Dynasty in China more than 3,000 years ago, and today is known for its mooncakes – a traditional Chinese pastry with a filling – as well as its celebration of the moon, family and the harvest.
The Duck Race
In Germany in the town of Tübingen people give thanks in their own way – through thousands of yellow, rubber duckies. In early October, the annual Tübingen Duck Race – also known as the entenrennen – sends the ducks racing down the river as a fundraising effort for charity. Similar races held throughout Germany are typically used as a way to give back.
The Importance of Gratitude
There are dozens of other festivals for expressing gratitude for many other aspects of life.
So whether you are grateful for family and friends, the harvest, the moon, nature or any other aspect of your life, expressing that gratitude lets the Universe/God/Source know that you appreciate what you have and are open to more.
Gratitude revives your attitude, it freshens your outlook and nourishes your soul.
Gratitude is like water!
If you’ve seen the “instant” products that say, “Just add water”. Well the same works for your life.
Is your life not going as you’d like? Just add gratitude.
Are you cranky and unhappy? Just add gratitude!
Gratitude shifts your focus from what you don’t want in your life to the things that you’d like more of in your world.
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” – Willie Nelson
When you concentrate on gratitude and your blessings, it shifts your focus; it changes your energy which can really turn your life around.
It can drag you up out of the pit of despair you were living in and bring you into the light. It lifts the burdens from your heart and starts letting in more joy and happiness.
What you focus upon increases, so focus on the things you’d like to increase in your life: joy, happiness, fun, bliss, generosity of spirit, contentment … the things that make your life worth living!
You attract what you concentrate on. When you concentrate on gratitude, you bring more of what you appreciate into your life. You become a magnet for your dreams and desires!
“Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.” – Northrup Christiane
“A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things.” – Plato
“In times of doubt and indecision, cultivate gratitude. The exercise of gratitude will never fail to strengthen your faith and renew your purpose.” – Wallace D. Wattles
“Stop thinking gratitude as a byproduct of your circumstances and start thinking of it as a world view.” – Bryan Robles
“…it is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” – David Steindl-Rast
Let the Universe / God / Source know that you are grateful for what you receive. That becomes the invitation for more of what you appreciate to show up.
Develop a habit of gratitude in which it is simply second nature for you to appreciate what you have, what shows up and the possibilities for more in your life.
When you learn to see the beauty, the gratefulness, and the appreciation in the big and small, you realize just how much you really have to be thankful for.
It is then that you truly learn to live a life of gratitude.
Now get out there and express some gratitude!
Let the gratitude begin!
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Have you seen my Gratitude For Life Journal and cards?
They help you to be grateful for all you have … big and small … in your life.
The book is available on Amazon AND both the cards and book are available in my shop.
