Ideas for Making Thanksgiving More Meaningful

In addition to spreading the spirit of Thanksgiving throughout the year, another way to further enrich your family celebration is to incorporate meaningful activities into your special day. Here are some ideas for enriching your family’s celebration.

• Combine holiday decorating with expressions of thankfulness. Use construction paper to make colored leaves, pumpkins, and other seasonal symbols. Write down reasons why you feel thankful on each cutout. Use these decorations to give the house a festive look.

• Incorporate worship into your Thanksgiving festivities. Follow the Pilgrims’ pattern for days of thanksgiving and praise by spending some family time in prayer, singing, and Scripture reading before enjoying your feast.

• Either before the feasting begins or after the meal, go around the table and ask each family member to finish this sentence: “This year I’m most thankful for . . .” To keep it simple for small children, use the sentence starter, “I’m thankful because . . .”

• Make the Thanksgiving meal educational by dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians and eating foods similar to the ones they would have eaten. Children will learn a bit of history as you help them research what kinds of clothes were worn and what foods were eaten during that time period.

• Invite someone to your family dinner who is unable celebrate Thanksgiving with his or her own family: an elderly person whose children live far away, a college student who can’t afford to travel, or a member of the armed services who’s stationed far from home.

• Sending Christmas cards is a common family tradition; why not send Thanksgiving cards as well? Purchase blank greeting cards with a fall theme or make your own. Inside, write a note thanking recipients for something special that they have done or the positive impact they have had on your life.

• Use the Thanksgiving holiday to remember those who regularly go without enough to eat. Fast or eat very small meals the day before Thanksgiving to understand how it feels to be hungry. Give the money that would have been spent on the day’s meals to an organization that feeds the hungry.

• Throughout the month of November, read Scripture and other inspirational writings about thankfulness. As a family, talk about what the verses mean and how you can apply them to your lives.

• Help someone from a foreign country experience a bit of American culture. Invite the person and her family to celebrate Thanksgiving with your family. Not only will your guests discover more about this country, but your family will get the opportunity to interact with people from a different culture.

• Express your thankfulness by sharing your blessings with the less fortunate. As a family, select a charity to support and devise a plan for how you will give to that organization. Have a family yard sale, for example, if temperatures permit and give a portion of your profits to the Salvation Army. Or family members can set aside some of their allowances each week during November. Use this money to buy groceries to donate to the local food bank.

• Create a Blessing Jar or Blessing Basket. Put the basket or jar along with a pencil and pieces of paper in a central place in your home. Throughout November, ask family members to write some of their blessings on the pieces of paper and put them in the container. Read these blessings aloud during your Thanksgiving meal. At the end of the meal, say a prayer of thanks for all the ways in which your family has been blessed.

Excerpted from Celebrate Simply: Your Guide to Simpler, More Meaningful Holidays and Special Occasions by Nancy Twigg. For more information about this book, visit Kregel's Web site by clicking here.

About the Author:


Nancy Twigg is a self-employed author, freelance writer, Christian speaker, and homeschooling mom. Besides self-publishing two books and having an active speaking ministry, she edits an online newspaper, freelances, exercises, and still has time to shop for bargains at yard sales and thrift stores. Nancy lives with her husband and daughter in Knoxville, TN.