Celebrating the Season

November is a wonderful month for the Boyers. We delight in making Thanksgiving crafts, reading the story of the Pilgrims, and making special treats. This year we made Pilgrim hat cookies with the grandkids. It is a very easy recipe and great for even short attention spans.
Luke and Melody dressed up in Kasey's old Pilgrim costumes and donned the hats they made from our craft kits. We laminated all the Thanksgiving placemats and the kids have been using them at their homes. Even Baby Patrick, Anne's new baby brother has one! We study the character quality of gratefulness. I figure we all need to be reminded of that at least once every year! I purchased some foam stamps of Pilgrims, Indians, cornucopias, leaves and other things and let the kids use washable paint to decorate sheets of construction paper. We still have Indian headdresses left to assemble! We've taken lots of walks in the woods to appreciate the beauty God has given us to enjoy. We love collecting pretty colored leaves and making color copies of them. They come out so clear and can be used for fun projects! Leaf rubbings are always favorites with all kids. You turn a leaf, bumpy side up, lay a sheet of paper over it, and color. The veins of the leaf show through.

I will share with you some of our favorite Thanksgiving traditions, just to get your creative juices flowing. Everyone has traditions unique to their family and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s what makes them so special!

At our house, Christmas begins Thanksgiving night. I used to be concerned that Thanksgiving would get lost with the prospect of Christmas coming, so we thought of ways to put Thanksgiving in its proper place first.

Our younger children dress up in their pilgrim and Indian costumes to help us remember the heritage the Pilgrims left us.

We have fun listening to Stories of the Pilgrims that Rick recorded for the kids and learning of Squanto’s life and how he was used as an instrument in the hand of God on behalf of the Pilgrims. In recent years my daughter-in-law and daughters have come up with a couple of wonderful ways to appreciate Thanksgiving for what it is and also transition us into the Christmas season.

Kari and Kate had the idea of making a wreath to show our gratefulness to God and then use that wreath as the main wreath of our Christmas celebrations that year. The photo shows the one they made the first year. Everyone had their name on one of the gingerbread boys and on the back they wrote something they were thankful to God for that had occurred in the past year.

Every year they creatively plan a new wreath. One year they used miniatures to represent notable occurrences in each one’s life during the year, such as a new baby, a marriage, Tuck shooting his first deer, etc. Last year we had colorful balls on which we wrote in glitter glue something we were thankful for.

It was also their idea to begin what we call a time capsule.(download it FREE)

It’s a record of goals set and goals accomplished, and reflections on notable things that happened since the last Thanksgiving. They change the form every year. So we store everyone’s form in a old popcorn container in the attic until next year. Each person reads their own to see if they met their goals and be reminded of how God has blessed their life.

On Thanksgiving Day a couple of years ago, we started making a special tablecloth to use on Thanksgiving Day. We have all the family and any guests sign it and write something they are thankful for. (We often invite people to spend Thanksgiving with us who have no family in town).

After about 9 o’clock the Christmas season officially opens with our traditional Christmas music, Drummer Boy, an album Rick and I acquired the first year we were married and Doug Oldham’s Christmas albums.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

~Marilyn