Happy Pre-Thanksgiving everyone!
Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday. Ever since I returned from my mission, it has surpassed Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year.
I love Thanksgiving because our family always gets together in some way. We enjoy each other’s company, sharing our failures and our successes. We eat great food that we all help to prepare. We watch movies together, play card games, and often go to bed with side aches from excessive laughter. It often involves extended family, but has also been just our immediate family as well.
Christmas seems to just get even more awkward as you get older. All the gifts you want are too expensive to justify, and socks and underwear are just boring gifts… so there’s a big draw up and expectation to a bunch of stuff you really might be able to live without.
There’s another reason I put Thanksgiving above Christmas, though. Christmas has turned into a holiday that is just as much about receiving as it is about giving. We all give gifts, but we all expect and hope to receive gifts as well. Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is the holiday where we all give, and yet no one receives. We all give thanks to each other and to God.
Thanksgiving gives us an opportunity to recall blessings. To enjoy and remember how wonderful life is in spite of our problems. It is a time to understand and place in perspective that which we value above all else.
So here’s hoping you have a safe, wonderful, reflective, joyous Thanksgiving.
PS > I may try to post while on vacation for the next week, but don’t count on it.