A New Thanksgiving Tradition

All your holiday traditions burned to ashes. It was an instant conflagration. Indeed, every tradition you had associated with your personal, professional and creative lives vanished in the fire. You really miss the dog-related ones.

So what to do you do? You do not cling to the past. You do not pull a Gatsby. You do not wallow. You do not deny yourself joy.

You invent new traditions, for yourself, by yourself, with others, for others. They come to you on walks. They just pop into your mind and land in a cauldron of creativity. There, they stew and simmer until they bring a smile to your face because you know you are onto something new and good and that will you pull them off.

You reach out. You rally others. You invite. You knock on doors. You moved forward. You spend very little money because new traditions don’t have to cost all that much. In fact, many can cost nothing at all except the price of caring.

You whip up a Thanksgiving crock pot of zesty potato soup and share it with the shut-ins and the shut-outs. While you eat, you watch the Cowboys’ game streaming on your tablet, on a picnic table, near a fire. You say a little secular grace before the meal, deliver a brief invocation in the spirit of the holiday, and toast with some red wine from a jug or box. You also cook up a steak on the fire for your new friend’s dog.

The game will play, but no one will really watch it, because talk will fill the air, good talk. And everyone around fire will know something new is happening. All it took was effort, but really, not all that much.