November is I am so thankful Month

November 1 - 30: This month is dedicated to giving thanks and counting your blessings daily. We encourage you to share with others the things you are thankful for!

Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling, emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive.

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships^. Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance. Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem. Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try to avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use. Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.

Gratitude has been said to have one of the strongest links with mental health of any character trait. Numerous studies suggest that grateful people are more likely to have higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress and depression.

While many emotions and personality traits are important to well-being, there is evidence that gratitude may be uniquely important. First, a longitudinal study showed that people who were more grateful coped better with a life transition. Specifically, people who were more grateful before the transition were less stressed, less depressed, and more satisfied with their relationships three months later. Second, two recent studies have suggested that gratitude may have a unique relationship with well-being, and can explain aspects of well-being that other personality traits cannot. Both studies showed that gratitude was able to explain more well-being than the Big Five and 30 of the most commonly studied personality traits. wikipedia
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Significant November

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of November is Thanksgiving & Harvest Festivals. Thanksgiving is a major part of November but did you know harvest celebrations occurs around the time of the main harvest of a given region? Given the differences in climate & crops around the world, harvest festivals can be found at various times throughout the world.

Boy & Scarecrow in Autumn

Harvests festivals typically feature:
feasting, both family and public, with foods that are drawn from crops that come to maturity around the time of the festival. Ample food and freedom from the necessity to work in the fields are two central features of harvest festivals: eating, merriment, contests, music and romance are common features of harvest festivals around the world. See List of Festivals

Month Long Observances:
Now since my blog is all about feasting, celebration foods, and food holidays... the first thing I wanted to list was the month long food observances for November.

National Bread Month, Banana Pudding Lovers Month, National Pepper Month, National Georgia Pecan Month, National Raisin Bread Month, Good Nutrition Month, National Pomegranate Month in the United States, National Fun with Fondue Month (fondue recipes), National Peanut Butter Lovers' Month & National  Apple Month which is observed for 3 months.

November is Native American Heritage Month, Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, COPD Awareness month, National Novel Writing Month, Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month, American Diabetes Month, Lung Cancer Awareness Month, National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, Crohn's & Ulcerative Colitis Awareness Month, the month dedicated to the Holy Souls in Purgatory in the Roman Catholic Church. November is also International Drum Month.

Movember:
It is quite common for some males in Australia, (especially in the city of Melbourne) New Zealand, and New Orleans to sport a moustache during the month of November. The custom is known as Movember (Movember being a portmanteau of the words 'Moustache' and 'November'), a fundraising event for men's health issues. In the United States, it has recently become known as No-Shave November or Noshember with growing participation from men and women alike to raise awareness of a variety of charities, and men's health issues, mainly testicular and prostate cancer.

The Great American Smokeout:
sponsored by the American Cancer Society occurs on the third Thursday of November, one week before Thanksgiving. Smokers are encouraged to quit smoking for these 24 hours, in hopes that they will quit forever. wikipedia
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Events in November

• All Saints' Day (formerly All Hallows Day), a Christian holy day, is celebrated on November 1. The day before, Halloween, is therefore "All Hallows Eve". In Sweden the All Saints' official holidays takes place on the first Saturday of November.
• In Ireland, November 1 is regarded as the first day of Winter.
• November 1 is called November Day (Lá Samhna) in Celtin tradition and is thus named in the Irish Calendar, where the month is called Mí na Samhna.
• In the Roman Catholic calendar, November 2 is All Souls Day. It is known in Mexicon as el Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and the whole month of November is especially dedicated to praying for the dead
• Britain and New Zealand celebrate Guy Fawkes Night, the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot, on November 5.
• Remembrance Day is celebrated on November 11in the Commonwealth of Nations and various European countries (including France and Belgium) to commemorate World War 1 and other wars. It is known as Veterans' Day in the United States.
• The Leonids meteor shower reaches its peak around November 17.
• International Men's Day is commemorated on the 19 November.
• National Adoption Day – November 21
• The United States and Puerto Rico observe Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November.
• For Western Christians, Advent usually begins on a Sunday during the last week of November.
• November is known as sassytassie awareness month in some parts of Western Canada

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -