Or is it the month between Halloween and Christmas?
Either way, Thanksgiving is special to me and I hope it stays special to my children and their (eventual) families.
When I was growing up Thanksgiving was a sort of slow down Holiday....predictable. My grandparents were there. We ate turkey and my favorite rolls and canned cranberry sauce - the gel kind that is shaped like the can...we cut the slices of it where the can left indentation marks. That's how we liked it.
It was typically the one time each year that my father offered a prayer. It was special and I love that it is about being grateful. Not about candy. Not about gifts. About bounty...about gratitude and finding joy in simple things.
As my sister Lucy and I became teens my dad tried to do things that made Thanksgiving a bit more fun.
We always went to the High School football game early in the morning and came home to my mom's Turkey wafting throughout the house. We had a day after Thanksgiving "Must Go' Party that was about friends and left overs. It was simple and we were happy about that.
Over the years and all of our moves we haven't been with family each Thanksgiving. We've been with friends. And we called Thanksgiving "Friendsgiving" for a while. We watched football and had a blast creating 'family' traditions together.
For these memories I'm thankful.
For the grounding and pause that Thanksgiving brings to me and my family now, I'm thankful.
Our culture has become so commercialized...that having a holiday completely centered around gratitude seems rare, right? And maybe that is why it is sort of swept to the side. But I'll always hold on to Thanksgiving.
I'm not a black Friday sort of gal, so as much as I LOVE CHRISTMAS and really do-it-up big in December...I try to keep Thanksgiving real and preserve (get it..canned cranberry...PRESERVE)...
no really, I try to preserve the heritage that it's all about.
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| Melissa Esplin's Thank You Printable |
Hop over to her blog I STILL LOVE YOU to download these sweet cards to share.
XXXOOO.
Thanks so much for the feature!! Hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteMelissa, You are SO talented! Thanks for sharing and allowing me to share the love ;) You're the best. XO!
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