Discovering stories

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On this Saturday after Thanksgiving, my sister and her oldest daughter, and I gathered at Mom and Dad's home for our annual Christmas goodie baking. The frosted sugar cookies is a sample of the detail work my niece enjoyed.

This is a family tradition we created as a protest of the huge cultural push to spend, spend, spend, our money shopping sales at stores. My daughter and my youngest niece had to work as they were in retail.

And I remembered a discovery I made in 2007 when I flew back to Scotland after celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. 

Flying Icelandair on thanksgiving sunday

At the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, I stood in line to check my luggage. With no direct routes to Glasgow, Scotland, I was flying through the Reykjavik-Keflavik airport. I'd flown Icelandair before.

But this time, not only was there a long line of people waiting in front of me to check in. They all had carts loaded with cardboard boxes. Some of the boxes were huge. I tried to think what might be going on that 15-25 people would each be carting all these boxes.

Was someone moving overseas?

Were the boxes filled with special items to aid victims of a catastrophe?

It wasn't until I boarded the plane and found it filled with Christmas holiday cheer (in spite of delays due to icy rain) that I found out what was happening.

My seatmate explained it to me.

Many of the people on the plane were from Iceland. They had just spent Thanksgiving weekend in the Twin Cities. Their reason? To purchase Christmas gifts, on sale, through the Mall of America. It was cheaper to fly to Minnesota, stay overnight, buy Christmas gifts during the Black Friday sales then it was to simply buy gifts at home.

That evening's flight, in the midst of missing home and family already, I realized how intricately our world is bound together. Change one strand and the whole fabric of community, of the earth is affected.