I couldn’t wait to share with you our family’s favorite way to prepare for Thanksgiving! We have created and decorated a Thanksgiving Tree for the last 6 years, and it has been a meaningful visual reminder for our family and guests of the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

Sharing the wonder of God’s good gifts is helping us

cultivate a heart of gratefulness in our home.

In early November, we begin by cutting small branches and arranging them in a vase or pitcher. We punch tags with this helpful tool (makes great gift tags too!) or you can use premade craft tags. Since our family creates this together, we write words of gratitude on the tags and hang them in the evenings when Nathan’s home. We record them daily as part of our family worship through November till Thanksgiving Day. In order for little hands to be able to decorate the tree, we just hang the written tags through the thin branches. It actually looks quite wonderful! I have seen them tide with twine through the punched holes to the tree, and it’s so lovely that way, too! Wouldn’t it make a meaningful centerpiece at the Thanksgiving table where guests could share their gratitude and add to the tree? All of us look forward to this simple tradition!

A Thanksgiving Tree can help to make us pause and reflect, remember and articulate. By daily recording God’s attributes and graces to us, we focus on the Giver – not only the gifts. It has been an extra joy to keep some of the tags after we’ve taken the tree down. It is so good for our hearts to read the praises written in years past and recount His great faithfulness!

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound;

praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!

– Psalm 150

with love. Damaris