Thanks

Header Challenge day again.  Kathy has chosen “Thanks” for this week’s theme. 

Thanksgiving, a National Holiday

A national holiday for some of the challengers (go see them from my sideboard links), including me, but not the others from other lands (they’re on the sideboard too).  Which has always been really confusing to me.  That other folks don’t do Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in my family, current and childhood, has always and only been given to our Lord.  Yes, we thank others for their part in our lives but in back of that is thanking God for putting good people in our lives and allowing us to serve others when we can as well.

I very often forget that it is a national holiday for us in America and not for other nations.  It’s not quite as obvious an exclusive as Fourth of July, Independence Day or even Veterans or Memorial Day, in spite of Pilgrim hats and buckles, or Pilgrims and Indians on candlesticks. Don’t get me wrong, please, I know other nations have their own days and ways of celebrating thanking God for the harvest and the blessings he bestows.  It is less about forgetting that other nations are not doing a “Thanksgiving” tomorrow and more about what actually occurs here in America. 

It is easy for me to forget that it isn’t a church holiday.  Easy to forget that some folks tomorrow don’t recognize God, don’t recognize it is to Him we own our thanks, tomorrow in a feast and everyday in our quiet prayers. 

Oh I get it, in the long run I really do get it, and I can easily get around my momentary confusion. Something like, “that’s what being American is all about”, being able to thank whom ever you want to for your blessings, including yourself. 

Thanksgiving as the Christmas Floodgate

A lot of fuss is made here in the States about the pushing of Christmas too early.  And the complaint is always filed against the stores.  Which I think is hilarious.  We don’t get all up in commerce’s face when they are ahead of the other seasons, beach balls are in the stores long before I’m ready to take off my sweater or see Dirt in his swim trunks. Nobody gets all crazy protesty about that.

So I don’t have an issue with Christmas being in the stores, it’s retail for crying out loud!  They are supposed to take advantage of your desire to waste your money on things you don’t really need. 

But why does this come up today? On my blog? Oh why do I talk about anything, it’s just stuff that gets in my head, mostly because I listen to way too much radio, late at night and in the morning, for that I get to thank Dirt.  But really it comes up because in America supposedly Thanksgiving is the national holiday that keeps us from goin’ all Christmasy too soon. 

Heaven forbid we do that now, tomorrow on Thanksgiving, or even today.  As if you can’t do both at nearly the same time.  Funny, Christmas never prevented me from celebrating the New Year and there are tons of signs of Christmas still around on New Year’s Day.  Well not in retail establishments, they’ve moved on to the next season we spend money on, usually gardening and Valentines Day. 

The fact that I have prepurchased New Year’s decorations mid-December and tidbits and sent out invitations (sent invitations?! not really but you get my drift) doesn’t keep me from celebrating Christmas to it’s fullest.  Oh wait, I’m even singing songs about New Year’s weeks before Christmas, and some Christmas songs themselves mention New Year’s.  Oh my gosh!  Its a travesty, quick call the holiday police, get those holidays separate!

If a couple of Christmas carols in the stores, or on the radio, or even blaring out of my car, causes you to not be able to savor your turkey and stuffing tomorrow (which by the way, is often served on Christmas dinner tables as well) then boy howdy, bummer for you.  Obviously I’m not the only one with adult onset attention deficit if thats all it takes to distract folks from the turkey dinner.

If you’re one of those Christmas crazy people who keep your tree up forever or put it up in September, have at it, I may personlly think you’re a bit over the top, maybe in my mean moments I’ll think you childish, but I’m not going to for a moment, think you are ruining my Christmas or my Halloween or Valentine’s Day.  I might think you’re ruining yours and tisk tisk you and shake my head for you, but I’m not going to go all congressional act on you or storm into your house and demand you move to a new neighborhood if you don’t shut it down.  And I don’t think anyone but the craziest of crazies would either, but there sure are a lot of folks that resent commerce for doing so, and yet demand that they be successful all at the same time. 

Oh, we’ve heard the song and dance about commercializing Christ, but come on, if you think it does that then don’t participate in the commercial side of Christmas, stop buying stuff.  Oh, but wait, even more so, if you don’t like the commercialization of Christmas, don’t get in the store clerk’s face when he says, ‘Happy holidays, sir!” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

In fact, even if you are an over the top Christmas person, blarring carols out of your car September fifteenth, don’t snear at the clerk and report them for not saying merry Christmas to you.  They don’t know you, they just got yelled at last year and sued by a Muslim for saying merry Christmas to them.  Please, for Christ’s sake, no really, for His sake, don’t get all freaked out about it.  Say, “Merry Christmas” back at them if you want, nicely, like you mean it, and move on.  Or return a, “Happy holidays to you too”,  because that is what they said to you, and because you don’t know that they aren’t Jewish or…  I don’t know, something other than Christian.

And if they say, “Have a good day.” sometime between now and January first, please do not return your grumpiest farewell to them.  They may be flustered and forgot it was the holidays, they may have sized you up for someone who will yell at them for the wrong farewell, they may in fact believe that to celebrate certain days apart from others is unbiblical, or their religion may forbid them to mention other holidays.  Getting all nasty isn’t going to sway them your way, or do you really suppose it will?

A Personal Holiday Wish

And please, really please, do not assume that just because I spell Christmas with all normal letters and only capitalize the “C”, that I don’t know that it is about Christ, or his birth.  I do, your neighbor might not, but be nice, don’t tell him he can’t celebrate it, but in a nice, not an overbearing denying sort of way, tell him what it really is all about.  And then make sure you look like what you are telling him to be. 

Something Completely Different – PSE

So on a lighter note, (and hopefully the last you’ll see of any holiday crabbiness from me) in my header you’ll see I’ve done a very similar thing as my postcard last week. 

I was honored by being voted the gold for my header last week, but I couldn’t just leave it there, the pictures stick out from under the letters and that just isn’t right.

And yes, often I am a dog with a bone sorta girl.  I gotta get it right, even if it kills me.  And I don’t care if everyone sees the embarrassing process. And now… one Photoshop Elements skill down, several zillion left to go!  

In a remake of last week’s as well as today’s header, you will see that my pictures in the letters do not peek out from around the edges of the letters!  I finally found the correct tutorial for what I wanted to do.  It was one of Alibony’s titled, “Fill Single Text Characters with Images” it is an earlier non-video tutorial.  And for sure, to never make things easy on myself, I dyslexified two steps for a bit. Two steps that mattered. But I finally got it. 

It is all about using a magic wand to select the individual letters after you have simplified the layer with the letters in question, switching over to the picture you want to stick inside it. Selecting it, copying it, switching back to the letter layer and clicking “paste into selection”.  Then Wala!  And like I hinted at above, some steps you can “mess” with, and some you cannot.

And yes, obviously you have to do all the steps (except for the “simplify layer”) for each letter, which is time consuming. But hopefully you don’t have a big long word or name.   There are more intricate points, but go to the tutorial for all the instructions, it is easy and the link is just right up there in the paragraph above the one above this one. 

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