Cooking Food, Making Merit, and Feeding Deceased Ancestors

September 26th was a big day for the people in our village. On this day, everyone who is not working goes to the temple and gives food that they have prepared to the monks. One good thing about this day was that people prepared a lot of food, mostly bananas and snacks (made with bananas and sticky rice). Within 2 days, we had an entire table full of bananas in our house that people had given us. I thought and thought about what to do with them. I thought about banana pudding, but then remembered that neither me nor Pamela like banana pudding. I thought about banana splits, but we don't really like that either. I have pondered about that decision for 2 days now, and most of the bananas have gone bad and are in the trash. Anyway, about this day at the temple. I talked with many people about what this day was about. First, I found that this is a day for Thai Buddhist to make merit (a Buddhist concept) by offering food to monks. However, I went on to discover that not only was this food offered to the Buddhist monks, but they also (or even more so) are offering it to their deceased ancestors. This follows along with what we call "animism." The people here refer to these deceased ancestors as ghost, and often seek to appease them by offering drinks, incense, and food. Our village leader gave me permission to take pictures; the following are a few that were taken.