Skipping Thanksgiving

I am going to admit something. I used to be a person who waited until after Thanksgiving to decorate for Christmas. Listening to Christmas music is another story but I waited to decorate for the first years of my marriage. Two things happened to change that.

The first thing that happened was that my family fell in love with Disneyland at Christmas. We love to go the week after Thanksgiving. The first year we went to Disney I waited until we got home to get Christmas ready. I was behind the rest of the season. It completely overwhelmed me to get ready after a big trip. So now I do a little at a time for a few weeks before Thanksgiving so that after Thanksgiving dinner we are ready to sit back and take in every moment of the Christmas Season without any worry about being ready. We get to live in every moment of Christmas and we love it. It is absolutely wonderful to me that Thanksgiving goes so perfectly with Christmas and that we get to experience joy, gratitude, love, hope, wonder and awe in two holidays that tie so perfectly together. And amazingly enough we never skip Thanksgiving. EVER!

 

 

The second thing that happened was 9/11; that horrible, soul-shaking, heart-breaking event that changed our sense of safety and tranquility forever. We went to Disneyland that November. We were scared to go, scared to fly, scared of evil people and what they might do. There was a somber feeling across the nation and a desperate need of hope. We needed some joy. So I started putting some up in my home....along with my turkeys and cornucopias. We put up wreaths, listened to songs of a glorious child being born to the Earth, put up our Nativity and celebrated the hope of good things and good people while we were overwhelmed with absolute gratitude at what we have been blessed with as a family. We celebrated Thanksgiving to the hilt and rode all those feel good moments on into the Christmas season.We found more joy. We loved it, we felt closer as a family and we shared our joy with everyone we could find.

 

I've said before that I don't care when you decide to celebrate, or decorate, or enjoy your own Christmas traditions. I feel that is such a personal thing. But I am amazed at the anger that is unleashed over people who embrace the whole holiday season and don't feel there has to be a grace period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I want EVERYONE to enjoy their own holiday season however they see -or should I say FEEL fit. Worrying about whether others are skipping Thanksgiving because they find joy in the whole experience only takes away from your Thanksgiving-your feelings of joy and contentment. That's something I  don't want to give away to anyone. The stores are going to put out their decorations, people are going to do their shopping and when you think about it there really aren't Thanksgiving carols to play over the pa systems...I don't see that changing. So I let  the wonders and marvels of every song, decoration, sentiment and feeling into my soul. I let the magic of kindness, giving, gratitude, love for mankind and the miracle of a Savior give me peace. Then celebrate every single happy moment I can instead of letting "commercialism" eat away at my heart. It brings me a sense of respite, it gives me calm, it feeds my need for joy and BONUS: I am ALWAYS prepared for Christmas. Let the joy in. It's wonderful-I promise!