Buckle up; the next four weeks are going to be very, very busy.
With Christmas four weeks away, activities are gearing up for the holidays.
All the home shopping networks are throwing out all kinds of incentives like free shipping and deep discounts and if you are able to combine with cash back offers from Rakuten, you could save some money.
Small Business Saturday is rapidly approaching on Nov. 26 and there are plenty of locally owned stores in Great Pittston that really look forward to in making their Christmas season a success.
According to the Greater Pittston Chamber of Commerce website, “Small businesses can boost consumer awareness, build on existing community support, and reach more holiday shoppers by participating in Small Business Saturday.”
It’s so easy to sit at home, dial up or order online, but you would help out a great deal if you could shop local, even if it’s just for one day.
The Greater Pittston Santa Squad (GPSS), as you will read in today’s edition, is in full swing and they are going to make a lot, and I mean a lot of children very happy this Christmas.
Last year, GPSS handed out over 7,500 new bicycles and toys to about 1,500 children.
Speaking of the Santa Squad, if you head to McDonald’s on Rt. 315 on Saturday, Dec. 3, between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., you just might see, Mr. Christmas himself, Anthony Marranca, greeting people and helping serve folks, along with other volunteers of the GPSS. It’s a way of GPSS giving back to McDonald’s who is donating some of their proceeds to the GPSS.
Pat Stella, and her son, Richard Corbin, have graciously decided to back the GPSS in their effort to help less fortunate families celebrate Christmas.
Shop with a Cop will be coming up on Saturday, Dec. 3, and nearly 200 children will benefit from all the good work the City of Pittston did to secure enough money for each child to spend $100 cash on their loved ones.
La Festa Natale, Pittston’s huge Christmas celebration blowout will also take place on Dec. 3 starting at noon. There will be food trucks, a nice sized heated patio food tent with tables to eat from, music, games and of course, an appearance by Santa Claus at the completion of the Toy Truck Christmas Parade.
The evening will not be complete without the city’s Christmas tree lighting by the City Ambassador.
It’s another great City of Pittston production that brings a few thousand people to the downtown.
Of course, before Christmas, we have my favorite holiday to celebrate, Thanksgiving.
For so many years, I’ve written on how much I love this holiday with families gathering for nothing other than food and love.
The effort everyone makes in their kitchens to make the day special is done out of love of family.
Nothing made my mother happier than to cook up an unbelievable meal and as I’ve stated over and over, she was good, very good at cooking and baking. I never left a morsel on my plate when Mom cooked.
The Thanksgiving table would be set with Mom’s finest dishware, silverware, and good glasses.
Naturally, overeating is par for the course, well several courses now that I think about it. The Thanksgiving meal always began with an Italian dish of either lasagna or ravioli. In either case, who wanted to eat turkey after that?
We all did! Following our Italian dish, the turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries, corn, and stuffing. Mom loved making sweet potatoes as well.
After all of that, you had to make room for dessert, and plenty of choices as well. You could always count on a homemade pumpkin pie and some kind of fruit pie – usually apple. One year she made apple cream pie. I still don’t know how she did it, but it was wonderful.
And since I’m Italian and we would eat early in the afternoon, after coming out of a food coma later in the afternoon, Mom would ask if anyone was hungry.
The truth was, nobody was hungry, but we still brought out the food again for another go-around.
You knew food was serious in my house when my dad would loosen his belt a few notches.
Even though football wasn’t a big deal in our house, we would always end up watching a game or two that day.
We would start Thanksgiving Day watching TV with the Macy’s parade and end it with TV with football.
Can you remember the days when there weren’t home shopping channels? The Thanksgiving edition of the newspaper was loaded with all kinds of advertisements for the Black Friday specials.
Everyone would grab an advertisement and plan their Black Friday trek going from store to store.
The plan was to either go to a store at midnight when it opened for business or get up early and hope the item(s) you were hoping to buy on sale was still available.
Let’s face it, after gorging myself all day on Thursday, who wanted to go out shopping at midnight?
Not this guy.
Whatever your plans for the next several weeks, be safe and enjoy. Eat hardy and plentiful and shop wisely.
Quote of the week
“Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.” – Henry Van Dyke
Thought of the week
“The turkey. The sweet potatoes. The stuffing. The pumpkin pie. Is there anything else we all can agree on vehemently about? I don’t think so.” Nora Ephron
Bumper stick
“Thanksgiving is the meal we aspire for other meals to resemble.” – Jonathan Safran Foer
