The Holidays

Well, we had a great time at Jessica’s family for the holidays.  I commented on Facebook last week that I was suffering from a holiday identity crisis since we were in Canada for American Thanksgiving to celebrate Christmas!  Regardless, a good time was had by all.  We all got spoiled…so much so, I could barely fit it all in the car on the way home.  Additionally, we were able to be there for Jessica’s mom’s birthday which was on Friday.  So we celebrated a lot!

We also had the annual debate about how early is too early to start doing the ‘Christmas thing’.  You know, playing the music, decorating the tree and the house, etc.  In Canada, they don’t have the Thanksgiving holiday to sort of delineate the start of the Christmas season, so they tend to start a little later with all the festivities.   The fact that we did Christmas this early is very unusual for them since there isn’t the ability to combine celebrations like in the U.S.

Jessica will tell you that I’m a stickler for not doing anything Christmas related until AFTER Thanksgiving.  Not because I’m a scrooge – I love Christmas – but because I really love Thanksgiving. 

I love the whole of idea of being thankful for an entire day.  In this age of entitlement thankfulness has become somewhat of a lost art.  We expect too much of ourselves and of those around us and we assume that we deserve things that we don’t.  I wonder what the world would look like if we didn’t expect anything and were therefore surprised and thankful whenever we received anything.  That’s probably swinging the pendulum too far the other way, but maybe thinking that way will cause us to strike a happy medium.

I also love the fact that Thanksgiving is just weeks before the greatest reason for thankfulness any of us could need – the birth of Jesus Christ. 

So enjoy this season of advent and anticipation…and thankfulness.