Quit waiting for “The Perfect Holiday Gathering”

In Peanuts Charles Shultz introduced the Great Pumpkin as a mythical figure for which Linus would wait each year.  For many people The Perfect Holiday Gathering has become their Great Pumpkin – always longed for, never arriving.

When I used to teach public speaking I would warn students of “the great speech fallacy” – the belief that any one address was going to make a profound difference in the lives of others.  Now you may be thinking of just such a speech – one that influenced your life in a significant way.  Great.  Now think of how many public orations you have heard.  If you are a regular churchgoer the number may be in the thousands.  The percentage of life-altering communication events is quite small.  It’s the cumulative message that counts.

I grew up in a minister’s home and I heard several hundred sermons by the time I left for college.  I don’t remember many specifically and one that I often think of was a baccalaureate address my father gave and not precisely a sermon (“Decisions Determine Destiny” – one time that alliteration really worked).  But is any of this to suggest that my father did not greatly influence me and the course of my life?  No.  It just means that particular sermons faded while the cumulative effect of his life remains.

Sometimes busy parents assert that they spend quality time with their kids, but if someone has honestly figured that one out she should write a book entitled “Scheduling Quality Time with Your Children: How to Preplan a Life-changing Conversation that Takes Five Minutes or Less.”  It can’t be done.  At least not for me.  Quality time with my children grows out of quantity.  I don’t know what moment will make a lasting impression so I have to string together a lifetime of moments pointing in the same direction with the hope that the arrow of my life hits its mark.

So this Thanksgiving, quit waiting for the Great Pumpkin.  There will be no Perfect Holiday Gathering, no conversation that solves everything or resets your relational clock back to the beginning.  What there can be are opportunities to continue a lifetime conversation.  Maybe this year’s portion of that conversation will be memorable, very possibly not.

The only caveat I would offer is to those who feel they need to begin a new conversation or to reframe an existing one.  That may mean admitting mistakes, asking forgiveness, or listening without trying to fix the other person.  In that case, this Thanksgiving is a great time to begin.  One caution: Rather than announce your attempt at a new conversation or desire to redirect an existing one, just express what you need to without putting all that pressure on this one moment.  Don’t spend this holiday continuing your vigil for The Perfect Holiday Gathering.  Release yourself and others from that pressure.  Give thanks for what is growing in your pumpkin patch.

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