Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It has all the food and family I can handle with no stress of buying presents, yet… One of my favorite traditions growing up was setting up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. You may wonder why this would be my favorite—after all nowadays you can find Christmas decorations in the stores the day after Halloween. It may surprise you to know there was a time when no one put up Christmas decorations until well into December, even waiting a couple of weeks before the big day. Back in my day (spoken in my best crotchety voice), putting up a Christmas tree before Christmas Eve was almost scandalous.
However, my mother liked rocking the boat when she thought it needed some rocking (hmmm, maybe that’s where I get it from…) So, putting up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving began.
She’s been gone for eleven years. I still see her sometimes when I look in the mirror or hear her when I open my mouth. She laughs at the funny moments of life, shakes her head when my jokes aren’t exactly appropriate, and gives me the “I told you so” when it’s needed.
But I feel her most around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving—more food than anyone can eat, questions repeated for those of us who can’t hear as well anymore, kids running around squealing, grown-ups cheating at games, and of course, no Thanksgiving is complete without a football game playing in the background. Now it’s my turn to retell the stories, keep the best traditions alive, and create some of my own to pass down.
Whatever your Thanksgiving looked like this year, I hope you ate your fill, treasured the chaos, and found ways to rock a few boats, making fabulous memories in the process.
