Thanksgiving #2

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. It really is a wonderful time to give thanks. We can be grateful for family, friends, enough food to eat, good company or whatever else our Thanksgiving will bring. It really is a time to be grateful.



Go around the table and ask what everyone is grateful for this past year. For some it might be good health or recovery from an illness, for someone else it might be a new realtionship or something as simple as reading a good book. Being grateful doesn't have to be something big and spectacular, it can be something simple and everyday. We tend to forget that in our harried and materialistic life.

Since this day is a holiday for most people take the opportunity to stop and think about what is really going on in your life and what you can enjoy and be grateful for.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving will be here next week and it's my favorite holiday. To me it's a very American holiday. It's a secular holiday and has nothing to do with religion. It does not involve gift giving and all the hassle that goes with that. It's also a holiday that brings Americans together. No matter what your political belief, your religious belief, your ethnic background, everyone celebrates the holiday and does it in the same way -- by eating turkey.


Sure there are some differences and some of those differences come out in the food that is served for the holiday. In addition to turkey, stuffing and traditional side dishes Italians may have lasagna, Greeks spanakopita, Vietnamese spring rolls, etc. But practically everyone has turkey and stuffing and potatoes of some kind. Many of us have the same side dishes year after year after year which gives the holiday continuity and ritual often lacking in the rest of American life.


It's a terrific time to be together with friends and family and enjoy good food and good company.

Surviving the Holidays #1 -- Easing Stress

Are the holidays a frantic time of real stress for you with worries about giving gifts, decorating just right and no time for anything that's really fun, instead of a holiday that's enjoyable and has real meaning? I've written and spoken on many different aspects of the whole holiday time including gift giving, having less stress and making the holiday more meaningful. I'm going to be doing a series of blog entries on the surviving the holidays.

The holiday time can seem like just one frantic time of running from store to store, decorating (got to get those pine cones gilded), cooking, serving, cleaning up and cleaning up yet again. It's a real beat the clock situation with lots of possibilities for things to go wrong or not be Martha Stewart perfect.

So to start off forget about perfection. The point of the holiday time isn't to have the best decorated house on the block or to serve the msot elaborate meal or give the most expensive gifts. It's to remember the religious (or other) aspects of the various holidays that come at this time of theyear. To get together with family and friends and have a good time, to look back on the year and think about what we can be thankful for. To help others to have a good holiday and to make the world a better place, een if it is in ery small ways.

Make things easy on yourself. One of the things I always tell people is to use paper or plastic plates for the holiday celebrations. It can save you endless time and aggravation. Yes, it's not so good for the environment to use disposables but it's something to do only once in a great while and it's something that makes life incredibly easier. Making life incredibly easier can be unbelievably important when you think your'e going to lose your mind over the holidays. And believe it or not, nobody notices. I never had anyone comment on the lack of china plates. All people seem to care about is having good food and good conversations.

You can also get great looking fancy paper plates and plastic ones that come in all kinds of colors and sizes. So you can use them in a very decorative way that can add to the table. And, again, believe me nobody will care. I had people never notice that I was using plastic and I've been to other homes where I persuaded them to do this and no one every commented. Enjoy the holidays, don't think of them as an endless burden.