How to Better Transition From Thanksgiving to Christmas
Ever come to the near-end of something good and wish you could linger a bit long? That’s how I feel about November. I find that practicing gratitude feeds the soul, and so does writing about gratitude. The mulling becomes a sanctuary of sorts, a welcome place I return to every November. I hope these November posts have been a welcome space for you, too, to linger with thanksgiving.
Moving from Thanksgiving to Christmas
Perhaps you’ve joined into the gratitude challenge this year and are discovering how giving thanks for all the little somethings sets the scene for Advent, awakening your heart to treasure the One who gives boundless blessings. There’s purpose, I think, in a full month to steep in thanks that overlaps with four weeks of growing wonder.
But you may be reading today, and your month’s not been slow. It may be that you intentioned to be extra grateful this month but then life happened. Maybe you feel stretched thin, and money’s tight, and Christmas is still coming though everything is falling apart.
Dear heart, this is for you: Jesus didn’t wait for our thanks. He came anyway. Into the mess and muck of our lives. Into the mess and muck of our distracted or ungrateful hearts.
Advent came before Thanksgiving was a holiday. Before we had gratitude challenges gradually overtaking our Pinterest-scroll. Before we stopped to say thanks.
God knew what we needed before we knew we needed it. So He gave us Himself.
The gift of Advent has nothing to do with us and everything to do with Him.
God is and therefore He came.
And the gravity of this gives me pause.
A pause helps us transition
A pause. Perhaps it is the pause that helps us better transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
A pause stills my wandering mind, slows my hurried steps, quells the ought-to’s I so easily take into December.
It invites me to a heart-check rather than list-checking.
It offers me the exhale I’ve been long-holding—the one that eases the tension in my shoulders and reminds me I don’t have to carry it all, be it all, do it all—because God is my all-in-all.
A pause creates space for my heart to hold the awe, the wonder of the gift of Christ come.
And when I think on who He is and His great love for me, for you, for us all, my thank you comes spontaneously, as in Psalm 30:4:
O sing and make melody, you steadfast lovers of God.
TPT
Give thanks to him every time you reflect on his holiness!
But pause I must or I overlook this holy God who wholly gave Himself for me—to me.
Thanks changes the script
If I’m honest, I’d like to be guaranteed gratitude before I give. Yet God in His goodness gave me a different pattern to follow.
One who withholds nothing, even for those who give no thanks, delayed thanks, or begrudging thanks.
One who is not easily offended.
One whose identity is not given to the sway of other’s perceptions.
One to whom all glory belongs yet He stoops to love even me, who so often forgets to say thanks.
Advent this year has already begun, but it’s not too late to prepare our hearts. And it begins with thanks for the One who changed the script for all the world when He came before we gave thanks, though He deserves all the glory.
I still have today
For years I’d give up practicing gratitude in November because I always failed to do it perfectly. I missed days of a gratitude challenge. I lingered in discontent or self-pity instead of thanks. I said words less than gentle, made sleep-deprived choices I later regretted.
And it was a hard fall from Thanksgiving to Christmas. The weeks were heavy with busy but empty of joy. I got wrapped up in the gifts to purchase and wrap, the Christmas things I felt we ought to do, the Advent calendar for the kids that would become a last-minute scramble to create, and forgot to savor the anticipation of the One who’d come.
Yet this thanks, whether we’ve seeped a month in gratitude or didn’t, is still available to us now as we enter the Advent season.
We can give thanks today for the One who didn’t wait for our thanks.
We can choose to pause so thanks can fill our whisper and open the door for worship.
Thanksgiving is a day, but not just a day—because it’s thanks that turns our hearts towards the One who deserves all our thanks.
A prayer for the transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas
May our days to be full, but full of the things that fill—and You alone can fill beyond the brim. May we pause to behold the wonder of greatest gift ever given—when You gave us Yourself. And may this pause lead us to thanks—for You, though You didn’t wait for our thanks, because You came anyway.
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In case you missed it!
There are now gratitude-themed phone wallpapers and a printable of my favorite Psalms about gratitude (in The Passion Translation) in the FOR YOU library. Enjoy!
