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We agree with calls to remember that the traditional story of the Thanksgiving feast origin shortchanged the Native Americans who helped colonists only to later be overrun by them. We respect demands for a more critical examination of how this became a country of bounty, and of how we as individuals came to have the things we love. These are legitimate issues to ponder today (and every day).
But sometimes it feels like we are making Thanksgiving too hard, that we are imbuing it with too much history and not enough here and now. Yes, a more honest accounting of our nation’s checkered (at best) past with natives is important, but so is just being plain grateful.
Studies show that gratitude can improve physical and emotional health as well as the quality of sleep. Telling people you appreciate what they bring to your life can improve your mood, make for better relationships, reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and increase the ability to empathize with others.
Being thankful can reduce your own impatience. If you remember all the things that have been good for you in the past weeks, months or years, the thing annoying you right now may become smaller.
But we shouldn’t need studies to know the positives of counting our blessings, in material objects and — more importantly — in people.
Ernest Hemingway, a man renowned for saying a lot in a few words, predictably put one aspect of this into simple terms: “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what is there.”
Part of giving thanks today is to not only appreciate what we’ve got, but to envision what it enables moving forward. Be thankful for opportunity.
Thornton Wilder won a Pulitzer for his play “Our Town,” an iconic American examination of how so many people go through life without realizing what they had — a sentiment he summed up in a sentence all should consider: “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
Amy Grant, who made a successful cross-over from Gospel music singer to pop star, once voiced another side of this holiday: Emphasize the second half of the compound title. “Thanksgiving Day is a good day to recommit our energies to giving thanks, and just giving.” To put it another way, if you are thankful for what you’ve got, pay it forward. Next year, someone may be thanking you.
There will be family gatherings today both joyful and tense, feasts of foods both traditional and untried. Some will insist on going around the table and recounting the “things you are thankful for this year,” evoking grumbles from others.
Some will wear costumes, elaborate or simply cut out of paper. Children may already have traced their hands with fingers spread out and turned the etched thumb into a head and the fingers into feathers. Televisions will glare with parades, football game and classic films.
And yes, there will be jokes, likely evoking more groans (“What happened to the turkey that got in a fight? He got the stuffing knocked out of him.”)
If you recently lost someone, this can be hard, trying to be thankful for what you had but have no more. If you gained someone, it can be fraught, appreciating a person coming into your life while adding their future to your worries.
But in the end, giving thanks is its own reward. To paraphrase a quote from an unknown source, while happy people may be thankful, it is thankful people who are truly happy.