On being thankful...

If there's one thing the Americans definitely do better than us (apart from political dramas... okay, I really was going to try not to mention the West Wing on this post, but what can you do...?), it's being thankful.

We have Harvest Festival, aka getting your five year old to take a can of sweetcorn into school to add to the big pile of cans. I mean, come on.

But a whole day of being thankful, well a weekend really, because you also get to be thankful for the time off, and thankful for all the bargains to be had on Black Friday (and then thankful for the fact that not all shopping days are that crazy). And you get to eat delicious turkey and cranberry sauce and green bean casserole and pecan pie till you can't be thankful or really feel any emotion at all ever again.

This all strikes me as a very good thing, and an excellent way to kick in the season where surely we should be at our most grateful - that God Himself would come to earth surely tops the list of "wow" moments.

So, inspired by this, and by the blog of Ami Loizides whom I follow on Twitter despite never having met her (funny old world)... I am going to start being explicitly thankful a bit more often. I hope that's okay.