Thankful Chain

I can hardly believe it is already November! I enjoy these weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. I wanted to share one Thanksgiving tradition our family has.

During the month of November as a family we make a thankful chain.

I originally got the idea from my Aunt Barb who did this with her family when I was a child. My family adopted the tradition and the year Scott and I were dating we decided to continue the tradition.

Each family member is assigned (or gets to choose) a color of construction paper. I then cut those up into strips one for each day from Nov 1 to Thanksgiving day. Every day each member of the family choose one thing they are thankful for that day. I write it on a slip of paper with their color and staple it in a circle to make a paper chain. There can be no duplicate entries for the month.

I have a small notebook that I use to record the items that are said each day. It makes it easy that way to check to see if someone has already "taken" an item earlier in the month plus I have been able to use the same notebook for several years and it is fun to look back and see what we each were thankful for throughout the years. For example on November 1, 2005 (the year we were dating) I was thankful for my family and Scott was thankful for my helping him with his homework.

Here's the notebook where I keep everything recorded.

By the time Thanksgiving arrives we have a nice long paper chain filled with the things we have been thankful for throughout the month. On Thanksgiving Day we find a time to sit down as a family and open each link to the chain and read through once again the items we had listed during the month. It is fun if there are extended family members (siblings, grandparents etc) that have been listed we are able to show them the link with their name and let them know we are thankful for them.

Here is our chain after today with our four links (Scott, Ruth, Will & James). I am looking forward to seeing it grow this month as we reflect on God's goodness to our family and the many reasons we have to be thankful.