My Favorite Holiday

I just realized that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I never really thought twice about Thanksgiving. I always thought of it as a ho hum day. I haven’t watched the big parade since I was a kid. I never cooked a turkey in my life. The feast never really excited me. I don’t have a big family that reunites for the day. There really wasn’t ever anything all that special about it. But this weekend I realized that this holiday really does rock compared to most others. I used to think that the 4th of July was the best holiday ever. But, for some strange reason, I no longer get as excited to see that day as I used to. So now Thanksgiving has officially taken over as my favorite holiday.


Every year starts with a half day of work on Wednesday. The work day ends with a big party and feast at the office. Such a nice way to kick off a 4.5 day weekend. Our new Thanksgiving tradition will be running in the Manchester Road Race. Karlo and I ran several years ago, but it resulted in my knee killing me and I certainly didn’t get the warm fuzzy sensation that I ever wanted to run it again. But this year was different. This year was perfect. The entire race experience was perfect. We had the smoothest time getting and and out of Manchester. Found perfect parking. Killed time waiting for the start in a cozy restaurant, sipping hot tea. Ran into all the friends we had hoped to see–quite by accident. The actual race was an easy breezy enjoyment with miraculously no knee pain. The runner’s high lasted all day. Dinner with my family was a ball. The food was superb and the company long over due.


And the positive flow didn’t end there. After torturing myself with the decision of going out into the Black Friday Hell or not, I finally decided to do it. I left the house at 7 am and headed to the Evergreen Walk. I parked right in front of the door at Eddie Bauer (the only store that I really wanted to shop in). I walked into a mostly empty store and scored myself the deal that I drove out there for. With a savings of $85 in one store I figured the trip was worth it and I was ready to go home. But then I figured I drove all that way so I may as well get something else. No problem there. The MINI was maxed out with a million little things we needed for entertaining (including a new tree for the foyer) and a giant dog bed. OK, that wasn’t really for entertaining, but took up lots of space in the car. Even that experience was smooth and easy. I hit zero traffic and sailed home by 10 am. It was all too pleasant and too easy to be Black Friday.

I listened to some Christmas music on the way home and actually started to look forward to decorating the house. To my surprise I arrived home to Karlo nose deep in xmas boxes and the tree already up. It was like a Christmas miracle! We had fun decorating and cleaning the house all day. It was much more pleasant to do these chores 1) together with Karlo and 2) knowing somebody will actually SEE it this year. Makes it much more worth while.

All of this and we still had a entire weekend to go. God I love Thanksgiving. We packed the rest of the two days full of things - as usual. A little bit more shopping, a little bit of playing, a lot of cleaning, and a ton of YogaDudes work, but still . . . we were home together for 4 days and that was the best. I am very thankful to have had such a awesome holiday.