Buckle up, buttercups, because we’re in the midst of the holiday season.
Is it just me, or did Halloween seem to last forever last month? I washed Halloween costumes every night for a few days, and it seemed like every night had a new activity – please don’t get me wrong, though, I’m not complaining. I love celebrating each holiday, and it certainly helped that toward the end of October, the leaves started changing from various shades of green to yellow and orange and red and the echo of acorns hitting the roof echoed almost daily. The temperature has almost officially dropped to below 80 degrees, and I’ve even busted out a few sweaters for a couple of days.
And while Halloween with all of its spooky, chocolately deliciousness has passed, now we’re coming into a time of thanksgiving.
Sometimes, especially with little ones, it’s hard to take a pause between Halloween and Christmas and just settle into fall, into the change of season (and change of time, mind you) and not rush ahead to Christmas. I know some people already have their trees up, and kudos to you. Our own tree will be decorated the week of Thanksgiving, but it likely will go down Dec. 26 because by that point, I’m ready for it to be gone. But there is something to be said for slowing down, remembering to be grateful for all the joy that not only Thanksgiving but Christmas brings.
One of the ways our little family does this is thankful leaves. This, again, is not an original idea, but I do want to share the original idea and then explain what our family does. The original design is to cut out pieces of paper in the shapes of leaves and for each family member to write down something he or she is thankful for and then hang it on a string in front of the fireplace. That is the original concept I saw.
What we do is very similar – we still use cut out leaves (though, to be honest, I don’t have a lot of patience cutting out leaves, so ours are very rounded and almost identical in shape), and each day, we try to write something that we’re grateful for – and it has to be a new thing every day. Then we tape them to the kitchen window so that by Thanksgiving we have a whole “tree” of leaves of thankfulness falling.
We may not do it every day, either – and that’s okay. Sometimes we try to do two a day to make up for a missed day, but I’m all about following the spirit of the thankful leaves law and not the letter. The goal is to remember what all we have to be thankful for – and it’s a lot.
Then, at the end, it’s just beautiful to look back over the month (or 24 days, since Thanksgiving is Nov. 24) and see what all we have written. We don’t have to sign them because everyone’s handwriting is different, but it’s just a joy to see what all we have added to the leaves.
Sometimes I leave the leaves up for a while, too, because on Thanksgiving night, the kids write their letters to Santa (and Mama needs to find some Black Friday sales, amirite?). But having those leaves up a little longer and resting a little more in the Thanksgiving season makes Christmas seem that much more special.
