I don’t tend to spend a lot on decorations for holidays–my sister got the decorator genes in our generation–but this past January as I was wandering the local grocery story during its get-rid-of-everything-Christmas sale, I saw this:
I had never seen an advent calendar so rustic and simple. Smitten, I bought it and promptly put it away for next year. Then last week, “next year” arrived! So I happily pulled it out of storage, hung it up on the wall in my dining area, and… stared at it.
See, here’s the thing: My family doesn’t have much use for a traditional advent calendar. My kids are teenagers (one’s away at college, even), so there are no tots here to delight in pulling little chocolates out of the buckets. And chocolates are out of the question anyway, since our dog would tear the calendar apart to get to them, and we’re not looking to get his stomach pumped any time soon.
So I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this adorable thing, whose numbered buckets indicate pretty clearly that we’re meant to do something with them daily. Then yesterday it hit me: I’ll fill it with words.
I suppose there are a lot of ways to do this well. Some people might fill each bucket with a biblical verse; others might fill them with prompts for games of Holiday Charades. For me, the best choice is to turn it into a Gratitude Calendar.
I’m one of those people who thinks Gratitude Journals are a wonderful idea–I can’t say how often I’ve started them. But I seem constitutionally unable to stick with them. This is something I’d like to change about myself, because I know it’s true that people who are grateful for the good things in their lives tend to be happier overall. And who can’t use a little more happiness? The Gratitude Calendar looks like it will be a wonderful baby step toward this goal, because it only goes on for a finite amount of time: just between now and Christmas. Surely I can stick with that!
So today I cut slips of paper from pages in an old notebook and put them in a bowl on my kitchen table, with a pen within easy reach. I thought about what had happened on each of the past 7 days (since the beginning of December), grabbed some slips of paper, and started writing down all the things I’m grateful for, big and small. Here are some of the things I wrote:
- UT and Son#1 get to go to the Cotton Bowl.
- Son#2 helps/takes over in the kitchen.
- We have extended family, and we look forward to spending time with them.
- Health insurance
Then I considered which days those bits of gratitude belonged to and tucked them in the proper calendar buckets, like this:
My plan is to encourage each member of my family to put words in the buckets whenever suits them, and then on Christmas Eve, we’ll pull them out and remind ourselves how much we have to be thankful for.
At least, I hope that’s how it will go. Wish me luck! And may your holidays be merry, bright, and brimming with words that matter.