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Feature Story
The Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving
by Nicole Pugh
“The purpose of The Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving is to inspire unconditional love, where all hearts open and all wines flow; a one-day-a-year event when all the people of the world can put aside their anger, hatred, prejudice, disappointments, for just three hours and totally concentrate all of their energies to the commitment of worldwide Thanksgiving for all the ‘good’ things we have, forgetting all the ‘bad’ things. Also, to give real, heart-felt forgiveness for all the wrongs done on earth in thought or action, personal or institutional. A one-day-a-year event where we, the people, strip down spiritually naked within our own belief system and truly forgive ourselves deep down inside and all others and promote worldwide love, respect, tolerance and acceptance of all human beings—culturally, religiously, politically, sexually and, of course, dreamwise. For we are what we dream, and now is the time in human history to dream of worldwide peace and harmony between all God’s children for the next 5,000 years.”—Victor Villaseñor, Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving, 1993
Back in 1998, my mom gave me a flyer for an event in Oceanside the Sunday before Thanksgiving. “The Seventh Annual Snow Goose Festival” it said in big, plain print.
“No thanks,” I told her, giving her a sideways glance and handing the paper back. “Not that I have anything against birds, but I usually limit my animal events to dog shows.”
“No, Nik,” she said, exasperated by my then-twentysomething sarcasm. She pointed to the bottom of the flyer. “It’s a special event that happens every year. It’s also called Global Thanksgiving.”
“Global Thanksgiving?” I said, “What’s that?”
“Let’s just go—and you’ll find out.” Most of the time, I balk at my mother’s tendency towards the dramatic. For some reason, this time I decided to go along with it.
That Sunday, cars lined the streets for blocks around 1302 Stewart Street in Oceanside, original home of Snowgoose Global Thanksgiving as well as family home to Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Victor Villaseñor. Eventually we found a parking spot. Dish for twelve in hand, my mom, my father, my brother, my boyfriend at the time and I entered the open gates to “Rancho Villaseñor.” The chattering and laughter of at least three hundred people greeted us as we entered. A line of tables filled with homemade dishes of all kinds stood along the edge of a brick and adobe wall that separated the half-moon driveway from other areas of the yard. People sat in chairs and on blankets on the front lawn, leisurely talking and getting to know one another. We found room on one of the tables and added our dish to the others. Then a woman handed us a plate.
“Help yourself—and enjoy your day among friends,” she said with a smile.
Why Snow Geese?
Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving began in 1992 when Victor Villasenor, author of the national bestseller Rain of Gold, was asked a question at a book-signing event in Portland, Oregon. That night, he had a dream that would change his life forever.
“How the whole thing happened was this,” says Villaseñor. “I was in Portland in 1992 and I gave a talk at a bookstore. It was packed with people and there were these very large local Indians there. When I finished my talk, they said, ‘What are you going to do about Columbus? It was genocide. It was an invasion. You can’t let it go down as a celebration of 500 years of discovery. You have to do something—you are our spokesperson. Your grandparents were indigenous people.”
Villaseñor admitted that he did know how to respond. Quick on his feet, however, he offered them a way to find the answer:
“ I said, ‘When I go to sleep tonight, I will ask my grandmothers to come and help me. [The Indians who asked the question] immediately jumped in. They said, ‘My grandmother was in with the local spirits. She was a healer. I will send her to help you!’ And then another said, ‘I’ll send my Grandmother.’ And then another. Then this little blonde girl said, ‘My grandmother is still living, but she has great dreams. I’ll send her.’ ”
With the help of at least a dozen grandmothers, including his own, that night Villaseñor had a dream like he had never had before.
“I had been on the road for three weeks. I was dropping with exhaustion and I went right to sleep. Suddenly, I am flying at treetop level above the pines. There is a full moon behind me. I hear screeching and squawking. I look to the left and right of me and I am flying with a bunch of snow geese. I look below me and there is a little stream and a pond glistening in the moonlight. It was so vivid!
“Then I looked to the left again and I saw their eyes,” he continues. “…Once they made eye contact with me, I could hear [the snow geese] talking. Their cackling sounds are a language. They told me that they had been living in peace and harmony for millions of years.”
In his dream, Villasenor wanted to know how the snow geese were able to live in peace for so long. What was their secret? Their answer caught him by surprise.
“The reason they live in harmony is because the big male in front who cuts the wind, so that everybody behind him uses…less energy, does not lead,”
Villasenor explains. “[The male] follows in front. It is the women and children who lead. If [the male] led, he would go too fast…and the women and children would all die. They set the tempo with their screeching and squawking and laughter.”
In his dream, Villasenor was told that the snow geese represent the “spirit of the human soul.” He was also told that now was the time for a change in the development of the God-evolution of human beings on earth.
“I had never heard any of this before—it was all brand new to me that night! [The snow geese said] that in the development of our God-evolution, it was time for the women and children to lead once more, as they had done when the earth was young, and the stars spoke and people knew how to listen. And it was time for the big strong males to follow in front because males in front that lead will always get us into aggression and war. Women and children leading will solve the real problems on the earth...They went on to say that women and children don’t want wars. It is only men who are separated from their hearts who want wars. Women and children never win at war. They always lose on both sides.”
That night, Villasenor wrote the 120-page book, Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving. The next morning, he began telling people about it and the profound vision he had had in his dream.
“I would just meet people on the street and start talking. Some people would run away from me and some people would start laughing. [But] I continued doing it,” says Villaseñor.
That same year, Villaseñor and forty-two of his friends traveled to Spain. He personally sponsored half of them.
“I put [that trip] on my American Express card. I terrified my wife…We planted a flag to forgive all of Europe for aggression all over the world and we planted a flag of peace. We invited the king of Spain to join us but instead he sent the Spanish equivalent of the FBI. Later, the two FBI agents [shared drinks] with us and helped us plant the flag.”
The Snow Goose Festival is held every year on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. In recent years, an average of 1,200 to 1,800 people have come to the Villaseñor Ranch to celebrate. Individuals and organizations in Northern California, Texas and elsewhere have been organizing Snow Goose Global Thanksgivings as well.
“What we do is we light candles the Sunday before Thanksgiving as a community and then we send peace and harmony across the planet, facing east,” says Villaseñor of this simply yet powerful tradition. “Then we blow out the candle and we take it home to our own family Thanksgiving. On Thursday, we relight that candle. We invite that relative we don’t like and we invite people that we know are alone. We have a feast of joy and happiness. We re-enact what the pilgrims did with the indigenous Indians at Plymouth Rock. We take the two periods out of U.S. so it becomes US, the nation of US all over the planet.”
In 1993, the second year of the Snow Goose Festival, Villasenor and his friends celebrated in Plymouth Rock, as a symbol of the ideal intention of the traditional Thanksgiving holiday. Officials at Plymouth gave Villaseñor and his group a symbolic lantern and a paper proclamation endorsing Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving throughout the nation and the world.
“So bring food, cooked with love, for twelve people,” says Villaseñor. “Bring jackets and folding chairs. We supply paper plates. We have music and we have children dressed in Snow Goose outfits. We meet strangers and we have a day of thanksgiving and of gratitude.”
Gratitude “Snow Goose Style”
A large part of the Snow Goose Festival’s significances and the impetus behind its conception has to do with cultivating and maintaining a feeling of gratitude for every moment of the day. Indeed, underneath the turkey and football games, gratitude is also the reason why families come together for the traditional Thanksgiving holiday as well.
“The one who taught me the most about gratitude was an [older] black woman [I met] in Los Angeles,” says Villaseñor. “…She was beautiful. My wife was talking to her. She said to [the woman], ‘How do you do it? [The woman] asked my wife, ‘How old do you think I am?’ And my wife said, ‘Maybe in your seventies?’ [The woman] said, ‘I am ninety four.’
“This just blew us away. We asked, ‘What do you attribute to your looking so fantastic?’…She said, ‘In my sixties and seventies, I was still full of forgiveness and tolerance. But when I got into my eighties, I switched and became full of thanks and gratefulness. She said, ‘When you are ‘forgiving’ and tolerant, you are still thinking in negatives. When you go in to being thankful and having gratitude for every day, for every hour, there is no room for anything except love.’ ”
The woman told Villaseñor that the years shed off of her and her health got better with this new consciousness. She had been sick in her seventies, and it all disappeared. She told Villaseñor and his wife that a day of thanksgiving can heal not only individuals, but also the whole planet.
“So what we want is for people to come to our [Snow Goose] Celebration and we want other people to start their own…We would like to get charter schools to start their own, Indian schools to start their own—church groups, fire departments, police departments—all across the country with one vision.”
Imagine a neighborhood, a city, a state or a nation that, just for one day, concentrates their attention on gratitude, joy and happiness. What a difference this attention would make in so many ways—for the rest of the days of the year to come.
For more information on the Snow Goose Global Thanksgiving, please visit www.snowgoose.org. Nicole Pugh is editor of Vision Magazine.