Still Giving Thanks

I know that Thanksgiving has already dropped off the radar screen--pushed aside by making lists and checking them twice, not to mention all those visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads. Sigh. For some reason I feel reluctant to set aside Thanksgiving this year.

Judging from the photo, you might reasonably attribute my desire to stretch out Thanksgiving to my deep love of pie. Thirteen. No lie, thirteen desserts on Thanksgiving. Eleven pies plus homemade gingerbread and a pan of brownies that had maybe one teaspoon of flour in it--just enough to hold the butter and sugar together. Obscene, I know. But my friend Marintha and I egg each other on. We each had about six recipes we wanted to try and in the end neither of us could decide what to chop off the list. So we made them all. Pie-O-Rama. Parade of Pies. Pie Nirvana. There were only thirteen of us here for dinner (one of them a three year old) so do the math. We're talking an entire dessert per person. (Dangerous, I know. But we called in reinforcements after dinner. Nine more people joined us for pie gluttony and games.) 

I know it's time to transition. Goodbye pumpkin pie, hello peppermint hot chocolate. But I'm taking the thankful part forward with me. Gratitude casts a glow over everything, illuminating life as it really is--so good. Life is good, my friends. Golden, even. So I tread softly into Christmas this year. I will not sprint through December, breathless and burdened, hurrying past the perfectly simple purposes and true gifts of this season. No, this year I will keep Christmas by keeping still--still in my heart and deliberate in my remembrance and selective in my preparations. In the stillness, gratitude will pool in my soul and fill me with joy. Regardless of what the calendar says, it's Thanksgiving today and tomorrow and on December 25th. Still. Thanksgiving.