Thanksgiving Traditions: letter challenge

Thanksgiving traditions are kind of hard to come by if you are me. But nothing makes me so determined as the prospect of establishing meaningful traditions to frame the childhood of my boys, and so since becoming a parent I've invented and found a few that I'm fond of. In case you are in need of a lovely little ritual or two, I'm going to share.



This first tradition has to at least be thought about early on in November. The address chasing portion of it has the potential to take some time. I steal a few moments and make some lists.

• First list: experiences I've had that I'm thankful for, but don't think about terribly often. 
• Second list - People involved in the experiences from list 1. 
• Third List - People from list 2 that I've lost contact with or haven't touched base with in a considerable amount of time. 

 And then, I exercise my reflective mind muscles. I sit myself down and start a few hand-written thank you letters. It should be noted that the hand-written part is important, even if your handwriting is as horrid as mine. It should also be noted that I've never actually made it through my entire list. But sending one or two is better than sending none at all. And once addresses are tracked down, I try to mail them so they'll arrive just before Thanksgiving. It's as simple as that, but it's one of my favorite little parts of November.