What did November build for December to stand on?
November 30 is the one fixed date in November. It closes the month of gratitude and opens Generosity, the first week of December, and it has four jobs.
Send what's left. Mail or deliver any remaining notes, because nothing carries into December unsent. If a leaf with a Community name on the front is still on the tree, today it goes in an envelope or out the door.
The Falling of the Leaves. Take every remaining leaf and photo off the Thanks Giving Tree.
Cut down the trunk. Take the tall, bare trunk and cut it down to a short, square-ish stump. Plenty of families cut down a Christmas tree this time of year and bring it home. You're cutting one down too. Yours just happens to be made of paper, and it gets to stay right where it is.
Get ready for December 1. Tomorrow Generosity begins, and the first green layer of the Giving Tree, the widest one, goes on at the bottom of the stump. If you're outlining the tree with Christmas lights, you can pin them up tonight or wait until the first layer is on tomorrow. If you'd like, hang one keepsake stocking per person tonight too. In December, each person's stocking holds the ornaments written to them after they've been read. The tree does the collecting, and the stocking does the keeping.
Some leaves come down with no one to send them to: the Cosmos leaves, and any leaf for someone you couldn't reach. If any of those are photos, they can go into your Gratitude Album, if you're keeping one. The paper ones can go in the recycling. If your family likes crafts, another option is to glue them onto a poster, put them into a scrapbook, or come up with another creative way to retain them.
Why cut the tree down? The trunk stands for your household, the part of a tree that stays the same from one season to the next. All November it held the leaves of your gratitude, and then you gave those leaves away. A stump is what's left, and that's enough. A month of noticing what you've been given is the foundation, and everything December builds will stand on it.
Prepare promised you the December instructions today, so here they are. December keeps the same seven-day rhythm you've used all month, with a few changes.
The tree grows back, one layer a week. On Day 1 of each week, a new green layer goes on above the stump: Generosity on December 1, Hope on December 8, Peace on December 15, and Joy on December 22. Cut four large triangles, or three trapezoids and one triangle for the top, each a little narrower than the one below it. Green paper is the default, but white paper colored green works, and so does wrapping paper. If four layers feel like too many, make three and let the bottom one hold both Generosity and Hope. Love week doesn't get a layer. It gets a crown: on December 29, Love's first day, a large gold or yellow star, the Star of Agape, goes on top.
Ornaments replace leaves, and the writing moves to the front of the week. In November you noticed for three days and wrote over the weekend. In December you write on Days 1 through 3, one circle each day:
Day 1, Core: gold or yellow circles about three inches across, one for each other person in your house.
Day 2, Community: one red circle each.
Day 3, Cosmos: one white circle each.
The note format doesn't change. The name goes on the front, the thanks goes on the back, and the writing faces the wall. In Love week, the circles become small stars in the same three colors, clustered near the top of the tree.
An Opening every week. In November there was one Opening, on Thanksgiving morning. In December there are five, one on each Day 4. Each person finds the gold or yellow ornaments with their own name, takes them down, and reads them. The red and white ones stay up, so by January the tree carries a record of the whole season. Christmas morning is Joy's Opening, and New Year's Day is Love's.
A candle every Celebrate day. Each December celebration adds one candle. On December 4, an adult lights the Generosity candle with a long-neck lighter. After that, every Day 4 starts the same way: relight the earlier candles in order, then light the new candle from the flame of the last one. By New Year's Day five candles are burning, and every one of them was lit from the one before it. The new candle goes where the family gathers, and it's the light you read the gold ornaments by. Reading them aloud together is the easy default, and it lets someone read beside the kids who can't read yet. Anyone who would rather read theirs privately can.
Choosing your candles. The candles are optional, but real ones are worth it if your home allows them: tall, thin candles in holders, often called taper candles or candlesticks. The whole picture depends on a flame passed from one candle to the next while each candle slowly burns down. If you have little ones and would rather keep an open flame off the coffee table, that's a good reason to pick something else. Candles in glass jars or metal tins sit low and are hard to knock over. They still burn down, but you'll light each one with the lighter instead of passing the flame from candle to candle. Battery candles take the flame out of it completely, and any kind works, from tea lights to tall ones, so get whatever is easiest to find. Each lighting step includes a short note for tins and battery candles. When a plan runs into a real limit, a good question to ask is, "What can I say yes to?" Choose the candles you can say yes to.
If your family keeps an Advent wreath. Many families mark the Sundays before Christmas with a wreath of candles, usually four. You're welcome to keep that tradition alongside the tree. This program counts its candles by celebrations instead of Sundays, so the two can sit side by side.
Three days of giving. Days 5 through 7 of each week are for giving what you've been given, in three currencies: time, resources, and words.
December supplies: green paper (or white paper and crayons) for the layers; gold or yellow, red, and white paper for the circles and stars; a sheet of yellow or gold paper for the Star of Agape (the Workbook may include a printable template); tape; five candlesticks and holders with a long-neck lighter for the Celebrate-day candles (or five candles in tins, or five battery candles); and, if you like, a strand of Christmas lights and push pins to outline the finished tree on the wall.
Let a kid do the cutting. Taking scissors to the trunk is a good job for a child who's old enough to use them.
Busy November 30? The four steps are short. If the day is packed, do the mailing first. The leaves and the trunk can happen after dinner. Remember, No Hurry = No Worry.
Keep counting. The leaves come down today, but the spoken thank-yous don't have to. Ten a day, out loud, each one naming what someone did, carries straight into December, and Practice Makes Permanent.