Thanksgiving 2007
Well, for the first time ever, the Texas Renaissance Festival was open for a 3-day weekend, beginning with "Black Friday" ... the day after Thanksgiving. On Thursday, the neighborhood of Renaissance professionals was a feast of feasts!!!
Potlucks started on Tuesday, with the "Thanksgiving Rehearsal Dinner". On Wednesday, some 20-odd-year Renaissance Veterans had a feast to celebrate their retirements, and on Thursday we were invited to no less than 4 different food events. We handed over the reins of the Yellow House Restaurant, and *that* feast fed about 30 people. I still think the best part was the 3 "named" turkeys (I think they were "Rosemary", "Ginger" and "Sue Ellen"), and the 20-somethings with cell phones on, calling their Moms for cooking advice. Phil and I designed a really fun kitchen there, with 2 island work-spaces, 2 ovens, and a 6-burner commercial stove ... it *screams* for cooking parties. For the rest of the week, we had people coming up and thanking us for letting them play there. The Yellow House fulfilled it's alternative function of "Community Center" quite well.
As Renaissance professionals, we're pretty good at building "family" wherever we happen to be planted, but the American Thanksgiving has been interpreted to be the ultimate in biological family gatherings. Consequently some of my working community had a hard time with the new festival schedule. However, another friend mentioned that "our" version of Thanksgiving is much more like the experience that the settlers had, in that they were people separated from their extended biological families, who were celebrating the idea of creating new families and homes in the new world. With that thought, and full bellies, we went into the 3-day weekend.
Weather did not cooperate, but this *is* a weather game we play, and sometimes you don't get the best hand. Even *with* a terrible forecast, the festival's weekend attendance was over 38,000 people. This bodes well for future Celtic Christmas weekends, and I'm sure that the Thanksgiving Potluck Progressive Dinner will only get better as well.
Potlucks started on Tuesday, with the "Thanksgiving Rehearsal Dinner". On Wednesday, some 20-odd-year Renaissance Veterans had a feast to celebrate their retirements, and on Thursday we were invited to no less than 4 different food events. We handed over the reins of the Yellow House Restaurant, and *that* feast fed about 30 people. I still think the best part was the 3 "named" turkeys (I think they were "Rosemary", "Ginger" and "Sue Ellen"), and the 20-somethings with cell phones on, calling their Moms for cooking advice. Phil and I designed a really fun kitchen there, with 2 island work-spaces, 2 ovens, and a 6-burner commercial stove ... it *screams* for cooking parties. For the rest of the week, we had people coming up and thanking us for letting them play there. The Yellow House fulfilled it's alternative function of "Community Center" quite well.
As Renaissance professionals, we're pretty good at building "family" wherever we happen to be planted, but the American Thanksgiving has been interpreted to be the ultimate in biological family gatherings. Consequently some of my working community had a hard time with the new festival schedule. However, another friend mentioned that "our" version of Thanksgiving is much more like the experience that the settlers had, in that they were people separated from their extended biological families, who were celebrating the idea of creating new families and homes in the new world. With that thought, and full bellies, we went into the 3-day weekend.
Weather did not cooperate, but this *is* a weather game we play, and sometimes you don't get the best hand. Even *with* a terrible forecast, the festival's weekend attendance was over 38,000 people. This bodes well for future Celtic Christmas weekends, and I'm sure that the Thanksgiving Potluck Progressive Dinner will only get better as well.
posted by Rhonni at 11:18 PM
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