A Plug for Thanksgiving Music

I know that so many of us are starting Christmas music right now–and I love that! I really do! You might know that Christmas music is by far my favorite kind of music to create, and I am almost always working on at least one Christmas song no matter what month of the year it is.

But today I don't want to talk about Christmas music.

Today, I want to put in a small plug for Thanksgiving music.

(If you have forgotten, Thanksgiving is that one Thursday in November when we take a break from "Christmas" and eat Turkey and play football.) *wink wink*

Jokes aside, a couple of years ago some of my dear friends and I released a song called "I Am Thankful." We watched with JOY as it was shared and spread throughout the Thanksgiving season. I was surprised when it continued to get consistent views throughout the Christmas season and into the new year. Winter, spring, summer, fall–this cute little song continues to be one of my most watched videos.

After doing some digging into the analytics on YouTube–I did study math in college, after all–I noticed that less than a third of those views throughout the year were coming from the United States. The majority of views were coming from places outside of North America in much more humble countries, primarily the Philippines and India. These percentages look much different than most of my videos where the majority of views come from inside the US.

This made me wonder what India and the Philippines knew about gratitude that we didn't. It made me wonder why, inside the most wealthy country in the world, we don't have more of a focus on giving thanks.

We have so much–too much–and sometimes I forget to show enough thankfulness to Heavenly Father and the people in my life and teach my children to do the same. If I could live my life with "an attitude of gratitude" every day, I imagine I would be an even happier person. I imagine my faith and trust in Heavenly Father would be even greater. I imagine I would be more content with the things I have instead of thinking about the things I want.

This leads me to another Thanksgiving song called "Thanks & Giving." In essence, this little song is the child's version of "Because I Have Been Given Much," and it encourages people to show their gratefulness by giving.

I would love it if you gave both of these songs a listen and–if you like them–plug them into your listening rotation this fall. Maybe we could even extend the focus of gratitude throughout the other seasons as well.