For the last seven years, Jim, Travis, Kelsey, Christina and I kick-off the holiday season with our annual Thanksgiving Day Holiday Toast at The Cottage. From 11am to 1pm, we serve Veuve Clicquot while welcoming friends, children, aunts, uncles, and entire families to our home before they head on to their special holiday traditions. This is our favorite holiday, and our Holiday Toast is our favorite tradition. It has been a special joy to invite our non-American friends and introduce them to what Thanksgiving is all about – celebrating one another and being grateful for the people and community that enrich our lives.
2020 is different. The desire to see family and friends right now, to hug them and share food & drink, is so strong, it hurts. But the guilt over sickening a family member or friend—or worse—would be even more painful. There will come a holiday season where all of our favorite things are possible again, but this isn’t the one.
As many of you know, Jim and I have been riding out the pandemic at our Rancho Santa Fe, California home with my 92-year-old mother, and have decided to remain on the West Coast for the holidays. Therefore, it is with great sadness that we will not be hosting a Holiday Toast 2020. But we are still toasting our glasses of Veuve to you, wishing you a happy and safe holiday season and fingers-crossed that next year will be back to the usual.
While we will not be toasting and sharing thanks together, we can still practice gratitude on our own and take this as an opportunity to focus on all the benefits gratefulness and thankfulness give us.
Practicing gratitude is a game-changer for our physical and mental health, bringing about better sleep, more energy, and lower levels of stress. Since grateful people have more energy, they exercise and move more, feeding their general well-being. Taking time to notice, name and appreciate what you are thankful for makes you feel better and more alive! But if you are under a lot of stress lately, you can counter it with products from sites like CBD Oil UK.
So lift your glass of Veuve, breathe, smile, and give thanks for being alive! God bless you all and God bless the world.
With gratitude every day, Happy Thanksgiving!
The Kemper Valentine family.
Holiday Toast 2020 – a walk down memory lane…