Mental Aspect of Holidays Sometimes Harder Than the Physical
Photo from Mother Earth News
Every holiday at Our Little House since 2007 has been about trying to establish new holiday traditions.
Some years have been easier than others, for some reason.
Thursday, I would say, was one of the hardest Thanksgivings since we’ve been here. During past years, we have either been to my aunt’s house to celebrate or gone down to our neighbors, but this year, they both left town.
As I wrote several months ago, we just haven’t made many friends in our new small town and the ones we have made have never mentioned getting together on a holiday. (Several did ask me what we were doing, but we didn’t receive an invite!)
Dale and I did plan a special dinner for Thursday. Neither one of us has ever cared for the traditional turkey and both of us have family stuffing recipes that we can’t seem to duplicate, so we planned on grilling a prime rib I bought Dale for Father’s Day (he takes a while studying the grilling methods and working his way up to the actual cook).
However, when we got up on Thursday morning, something – I don’t even remember what now – reminded me so vividly of my mother – that grief and sadness set in.
Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving
On this day that we are supposedly giving thanks for all of our blessings (and not making it about family squabbles, the size of the meal, shopping, or who won the football game), I’m, of course, taking this opportunity to blog about gratitude.
On most days, I have an “attitude of gratitude,” I find it within myself to be thankful for at least one thing in my life that is good. Oftentimes, when I am writing in my vision journal, I try to find as many things as I can, not limiting myself by finding “at least five,” or “at least ten.”
Sometimes I come up with a whole page of things I am thankful for.
I think for some people, it isn’t so easy. They will always find their glass half empty, or wishing for more than what they have. They see gratitude as a fine line of accepting what they have as “defeat” or that they may not ever have more money, that bigger house, the newest technological device or the latest car.
They fail to see that we all must be truly grateful for everything in our lives in order to attract more.
On the days I find many things to be thankful for, it creates a positive energy that allows me to accomplish more in my personal and my work life.
That’s how gratitude plays into the Law of Attraction.
I hope all of our Living Large community, whether you reside in the U.S. or someplace else, will find time to count your blessings today.
It will make you feel better and just might help attract more of what you want into your life.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Boycotting Black Friday
Only three more days until the Silly Shopping Season officially gets underway, when people flock to stores to purchase socks, ties, hats and other “stuff” that can be returned on the day after the Silly Season ends.
Or, should we say, only two more days until the Silly Season gets underway, because the retail Gods in all of their wisdom decided this year to push Black Friday to Thanksgiving, opening their stores at 10 and 11 p.m. Thursday night.
When I began my first and only retail job, at J.C. Penney, 30 years ago this fall, holidays were sacred. If we couldn’t count on anything else in retail, we could at least count on spending time with our families on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
That, unfortunately, is something people working in retail can no longer count on.
“But,” you say, “they don’t have to be to work until that night.”
Wrong, most retail employees don’t just show up when the doors open, they typically have to be at work a couple hours ahead of time to stock and do inventory, especially before such a huge event as Black “Friday,” meaning people who work in a store that is opening at 10 p.m. will have to report to work by 6 or 7 p.m., which means they also had to presumably sleep before coming in.
Doesn’t leave much time with their families.
A Greener and More Humane Thanksgiving
I visited my massage therapist yesterday and I always enjoy our conversation almost as much as I do the massage. We’re generally like-minded on most issues – she is the one who founded our local sustainable page that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago.
I was surprised to learn, though, that we didn’t agree on the uproar PETA made this year over the Turkey Trot Festival, in which live turkeys are thrown from an airplane. The wild turkeys, which can only generally fly at low altitudes and slow speeds, sometimes plummet into the ground, cars or buildings with a sickening splat.
She generally agreed with most of the townsfolk that it is a long standing, 60-year tradition and the kids were the ones who really missed out on getting to chase the birds – if they survived the drop – which is the whole point, she said (I’m glad she said this is the point because up until now I did not get it).
“There are turkeys dying everyday in the factory farms and far less of them die in one day at the festival than in a factory farm,” she argued. “I choose to pick my battles over other animal rights issues.”
