IT'S (NOT) CHRISTMAS SEASON
It’s the day after Halloween. More commonly known as the first day of the Christmas season.
Over the next two months millions of Americans will attempt to keep up with the madness of the Christmas season. Parties. Shopping. Decorating. Retail giants in our land have rolled out their Christmas inventory ready for billions of dollars to be spent again. And Starbucks has already served thousands of customers their coffee in disposable red coffee cups.
The only speed bump in the mad dash toward Christmas Day is Thanksgiving: the forgotten holiday. For many the last Thursday in November offers a quick breather in the middle of an insanely busy season. It’s a pit stop before the greed stampede we call “Black Friday.”
Our overlooking Thanksgiving in light of the Christmas season seems to be a symptom of a condition we live with everyday. We are not people characterized by gratitude – and I include myself in that. Our drawers and closets overflow with clothes and our refrigerators brim with food yet the words, “thank you” are often not heard.
It’s no wonder Thanksgiving has become more connected to gluttony, football and sleeping off a hangover from Wednesday night than its connection to deep gratitude for all we’ve been given. And Christmas? No other holiday has such a deep expression of materialism and consumerism.
We skip over a holiday focused on thankfulness, and focus on a holiday that has become an unfortunate expression of wanting more. And wanting more only exposes the fact that we are not thankful for all we already possess. It's time we work to move past this.
We would do well to spend the next 27 days until Thanksgiving focused solely on gratitude for all we’ve been given. If we can do this, we just might find, we will want less come Christmas Day. Because we may finally have eyes to see all we have already been given.
For the next 27 days, I will be tweeting what I am grateful for with the simple hashtag #ThanksBeforeChristmas. This is just a small way I can refocus myself to remember all I have been given, and express proper gratitude to the God who has given it to me. I invite you to do the same.