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Bah! Humbug!
You can't mean that, four days before Christmas!
Oh yes you can, ESPECIALLY four days before Christmas!
This morning the test-that-tries-women's-souls commences.
As with Christmas past, this year the test will be multiple choice:
who sleeps where, who cooks what, who gets custody of Christmas morning, which gifts haven't arrived, which gifts haven't yet been sent, who picks people up at the airport, who checks into Bedlam.
Suddenly Ebenezer Scrooge seems like the most
maligned and misunderstood figure in literature...
Remember Pollyanna?...
I think the instructions to her Glad Game should be festively wrapped and put under Everywoman's tree...
The Glad Game is the perfect antidote when a holiday problem flares up suddenly. "Pollyanna did not pretend that everything was good," her creator, Eleanor Hodgman Porter, insists. "Instead she represented a cheery, courageous acceptance of the facts. She understood that unpleasant things are always with us, but she believed in mitigating them by looking for whatever good there is in what is."...
The Bible records eight hundred instances of God instructing his children to be glad and rejoice. Obviously...He must have wanted us to live that way, at least some of the time.
One Christmas these beliefs are put to a severe test when the annual holiday hamper arrives from the Missionary Ladies Aid Society. Pollyanna has asked for a real china doll for Christmas. But when she opens the hamper on Christmas morning, she finds that the good ladies have mistakenly sent her a pair of children's crutches instead. Naturally, she feels devastated. In an effort to comfort her, the Reverend makes up a game to see if they can find one good thing about receiving a pair of crutches as a Christmas gift. Of course, they do: Pollyanna doesn't need them! Thus, the Glad Game is created.
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Okay, here we go.
The Glad Game.
I've got a funny feeling I'm going to need it.
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Gratitude Journal
***
1) Christmas is so close!
2) Date night.
3) Only one more day of school before break!
4) The Tim Allen Santa Claus movies.
5) Dressing Up.
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