How I Plan to Celebrate Thanksgiving
By Orson Scott Card
Gratitude is one of the hardest emotions to maintain or express. On the one hand, we easily give thanks for the most trivial services, trading the empty phrases “thank you,” “no, thank you” with store clerks.
The gratitude becomes a bit less perfunctory when we thank people who give us directions or hold open a door or wait to let us go by, but still the words come easily to our lips.
On the other hand, those who have given us the most important gifts often hear nothing of thanks from us. Perhaps it is because such gifts come to us as if by right; they surround us like air, which we scarcely think of unless it’s gone.
And when we do thank those who have surrounded us with gifts all our lives – loving parents, kind and honorable friends and teachers, even strangers who work for the public good – we become tongue-tied and express our gratitude in generalities:
“Thanks for everything, Mom!”
“Keep up the good work!”
“Thanks for … for … all you do.”
What lips are shy to say, we can write down.
This Monday night before Thanksgiving, our family will sit down and each write a thank-you letter. Not for a birthday or Christmas gift, but to someone who has earned our gratitude in the ordinary course of life. The thank-you will be very specific: Not “thanks for everything,” but thanks for this thing you did.
The more specific the deed we thank them for, the more clearly they will feel and believe our gratitude.
In fact, it strikes me that those of us for whom Thanksgiving is a religious occasion would do well to thank God the same way. Just because we owe life itself to God does not mean we should get by with a “thanks for everything, Lord!”
Why not point out at least a few very specific things that have brought us joy?
Perhaps the best moment for that is not during the blessing over the food, as it grows cold and hungry guests grow impatient. Why not have a family prayer in the morning of Thanksgiving Day, before the cooking, before the televised parade, before the games begin?
And even for our friends and neighbors who may not believe in God, that shouldn’t be an excuse to let Thanksgiving be an empty vacation day. To them I would say: There are people in your life who have blessed your days, and some of them may be with you on Thanksgiving. Even if you aren’t grateful for everything they do, surely you are grateful for something.
Why not speak the words aloud?
It could be a planned family ritual; it could be a spontaneous expression.
You could make sure each person was thanked in turn; you could let each person speak when and if they wish to.
It could take place openly during the feast; it could be a series of private conversations through the morning.
You could thank someone for what they did that day, that week; or you could bring up the memory of a single long-past kindness that they may even have forgotten that they did.
In our suspicious and ungenerous age, we sometimes hear people sneer at “do-gooders”: “Oh, he only does that because being ‘kind’ makes him feel good.” As if kindness would only be genuine if it made us miserable …
Civilization depends on people being disposed toward generosity toward others – protective toward all children, loyal to friends and family, kind to all strangers, obedient to the rule of law even when nobody is looking.
Behaving this way should make us feel good!
And if, by speaking our gratitude aloud, we help other people feel the value of their kindness – their civilized behavior – then are we not encouraging more kindness – more civilization? Isn’t that a good thing?
While those who sneer at “do-gooders” and denigrate those who keep to the rules of civilized life: What are you saying, except that you wish people would do less good, and be less civilized?
Surely that can’t be what you want.
It is good to be kind to others, and no, we don’t do it in order to be thanked.
But it does not diminish a kind deed when we help the giver of the gift to feel good about having given it.
And for those of us who spend a part of Thanksgiving Day speaking our thanks to God, it is not that he needs the encouragement – though who is to say that he does not?
If our lives are the result of his handiwork, and we are here for his purposes, then the things we think to thank him for show what kind of workmanship he did in making us, and how well his investment in our mortal life is turning out.
Thank God for grateful people, who notice when good things come to them, and give thanks for them, and pass the generosity along.
FEATURES
