Other than eating, you spent a lot of time last week feeling thankful, didn’t you? You thanked God for your cozy home, your hard-working husband, your secure job, your health, and all those other blessings that God has provided for you.

Well, Thanksgiving is over now, so blessings, schmessings! If you’re not careful, that thankful heart will spill over into the Christmas season and you might do something drastic, like give all of your gift budget to the homeless or your church or (gasp) world missions! Being grateful was great for a week or so, but now it’s time to get back on the holiday bandwagon and focus on what you don’t have!

Here are a few tips that might help:

1. Collect holiday sales ads. You know those catalogs and sales papers you got in the mail this week? Save them! Display them proudly on your coffee table like photos of your grandchildren and read through them often. If you get one from a store you’ve never even heard of – even better! Now you have documented evidence of all those things you never knew you really needed.

2. Watch HGTV. A lot. Home improvement shows have a lot of great tips for decorating for the holidays. Be sure to spend a significant time watching them so you can see exactly how to place your Christmas ribbon on your tree this year. Of course, the ribbon you have doesn’t exactly match the paint color on the walls, so you should probably invest in some new ribbon. But, since you’re going to buy new ribbon, you really should redecorate the entire living room. Seriously. Why spend $10 to $20 on ribbon if you’re not going to do it right!?

3. Buy boots. If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to pull out your winter wardrobe and see what you can salvage for this year. Be sure to do this as quickly as possible after eating the last bite of leftover pumpkin and/or pecan pie. You will quickly find that some things have shrunk since last winter, so go back to the coffee table and dig up those sales ads for ideas. See those boots? The ones on pg. 6? They’re on sale!!! Yes, I know you have three pairs of boots that still fit, but you don’t have these boots! These will look great with leggings! What’s that? You haven’t seen leggings since the Reagan administration? Well, then you need a makeover, stat! But be sure and buy the boots now so that you’ll have them when your diet really starts to work in late January.

4. Spend time looking at vacation photos. If you’re not on Facebook, you’re missing out. Other than knowing that your neighbor had a delicious chai tea latte for breakfast, you can discover a whole new world of exotic places to visit by browsing through your friends’ vacation photos online. There’s a whole new world out there that God created and you haven’t explored yet! Your kids have never seen snow. They are deprived!  The aurora borealis? You can’t fully appreciate beauty like that through film. And a guided tour through ancient Greece would be so educational! You really don’t get out enough. You should call that travel agent before she gets too busy!

5. Read nothing but Christian romance novels. It’s a noble thing to model your marriage after godly examples. What better way to find them than by downloading Christian romance examples into your mind through completely realistic plot lines! This way, the next time you’re at an intersection and your husband doesn’t jump out of the car and run around like a teenager doing a Chinese fire drill after a slumber party to passionately kiss you through your open window, you’ll be completely valid in your explosion of tears. After all, Todd did it to Christy in Summer Promise and now they have “their intersection.” You and your husband don’t have “your intersection.” You don’t even have “your song.” The truth is, he may not even love you at all.

So if you’re sitting pretty today, still basking in the afterglow of turkey-induced thankfulness, by all means, snap out of it! And whatever you do, don’t – under any circumstances – start reading the Psalms!

Let’s Talk! What blessings are the quickest for you to forget?

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