For about two weeks all the talk around our house has been about Santa coming to town and Christmas lists. Thanks to corporate America, and to some degree our neighbors, Thanksgiving is barely a holiday anymore. After all, some of our neighbors have already put up their Christmas lights.
It’s hard to teach our children about being thankful for what they have when all they can think about is Christmas and Santa bringing presents. Instead of November being about giving thanks, we now have two or more months of Christmas. Let’s face it, it’s more than just November because retail stores can’t wait to push out the Halloween merchandise to fill aisle after aisle with Christmas decorations.
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. For me, it has always been about taking a moment to look at life, be thankful and really appreciate my family. My mom taught me the importance of family over the years.
Growing up, Thanksgiving was a time when our family got together, watching the Dallas Cowboys, my mom cooking a wonderful meal, all of us playing football in the yard, and then sitting down to dinner with a lot of laughs and evidence of how truly lucky we are as a family.
My mom would often talk about my grandmother, cooking with her and how Thanksgiving was better than Christmas because it isn’t about gifts and spending money. Thanksgiving is about family, eating and being together. Thanksgiving is about understanding that being together and having each other is always going to trump material things.
I can’t say I’ve passed those same values onto my own children. We don’t always spend the day at home, going to a different family member’s home each year. In the end, my children are missing out on those great memories I was able to make.
Getting back to being a parent and setting true examples, I really am working this year to instill the importance of being thankful, of appreciating what we have, and really understanding that family matters. I want to get traditions going. I want my children to become adults talking to their own children about the family football game like I do now. I want them to laugh and look forward to Thanksgiving instead of using it as a measuring stick to how close we are to Christmas.
We give our children so much anymore that they think more about presents and what they will get instead of understanding what they have and who they have to treasure it with.
This year, I am going to do my best to make Thanksgiving just a little more important than it’s been over the last few years.
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