#naphopomo day 25: i guess it's a start
I didn't grow up celebrating Thanksgiving, and neither did Marcus; now that we have an American daughter, we feel it important that we celebrate it (at least, we do when we're in America. Often, we take the opportunity to visit Marcus' family in England during this holiday week, but not this year). And so, since Marcus and I didn't have parents to guide us in the ways of American Thanksgiving, the rituals that we've come up with have been sort of cobbled together on our own.
One of our Thanksgiving traditions is to decorate our fireplace mantel with a simple, autumnal pinecone garland. We leave a bowl of tags and a pen nearby, and we invite people who visit our home to write what they're thankful for on the tag, and attach it to the garland. Similarly, as we think of things during the days around Thanksgiving, we write them on our own tags and add them to the garland. Then when the time comes to put up our Christmas tree, we transfer the garland to the tree. Simple, but gets the point across, yes?
So this weekend, I pulled out our Thanksgiving garland, and set out the bowl with the tags and a pen.
To get things started, I filled out my first tag. It said, "I'm thankful for my funny, smart, clever daughter who makes me laugh and laugh."
Then Alex grabbed a tag and the pen, and filled out one of her own. It said, "I am thankful for Starbucks Green Tea Frappuccinos."
I'm not sure where I went wrong, here.
We bought our Thanksgiving garland at Michael's years ago, so I don't know if they carry them anymore. However, if you'd like a photo garland like the one in the photos above, then I gotcha covered: they are the downloadables for my new ecourse, Advent of Light -- and registration ends FRIDAY! So if devoting a few minutes of peace to yourself every day during the first 24 days of December seems like a lovely thought -- not to mention creating a photo garland for your own mantel during that time -- then this is for you: it's sort of an audio/visual "advent calendar" with audio meditations, downloadable images, and a daily date with your journal. Join me!