Let’s cultivate gratitude year-round
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This article was published 17/10/2021 (599 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Giving thanks. Why is it so significant that we have a holiday dedicated to it?
According to www.canadashistory.ca, Canada’s first “Thanksgiving” took place in 1578 as Martin Frobisher and crew gave thanks for a safe arrival on these shores. By the 1600s regular Thanksgiving feasts took place between the French and Mi’kmaq and included scurvy-preventing cranberries.
Later, the Loyalists from down south introduced traditional foods like turkey and pumpkin/squash. After Remembrance Day was made a holiday following the First World War, the second Monday of October was declared to be “a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed”.
Cool history lesson, but why does giving thanks matter? What is the point of gratitude? And what if one doesn’t believe in God?
A simple internet search will bring up an incredible amount of studies pointing to the benefits of gratitude. Gratitude is good for us. It’s good for our physical health in multiple ways, it’s good for our relationships, good for our personalities, good for our emotional/mental health, and even good for our careers (see www.happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude).
Should we seek to be grateful to reap the rewards? While that may help some get started, I think gratitude must be recognized for what it is, not what it can do. Gratitude is essentially recognizing the gifts we are given and giving thanks where it is due.
What gets in the way of gratitude? Being blind to the gifts is a big one. Either we don’t see all the goodness around us at all, or we take it for granted, see it as owed to us, or view it as the result of our own accomplishment.
Albert Einstein once said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
The other obstacle is a lack of expressing our gratitude. We get lazy. William Arthur Ward compared it to wrapping a present and not giving it. It’s not enough to feel gratitude — we must show it.
What is the purpose of gratitude? Here are some clues.
Gratitude is relational. We always give thanks to a person. Gratitude is contagious. It changes the culture around us. Author Melody Beattie notes that “Gratitude can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
Gratitude makes relationships flourish— whether human-to-human or more transcendent. You may not be so sure, but I believe thankfulness is God’s love language. Just like parents love to hear their kids being thankful, so does he. And he made it a win-win — we benefit, too.
Let’s not leave thankfulness for just one day. Let’s cultivate it all year.
Sonya Braun is a community correspondent for Springfield North.
Sonya Braun
Springfield North community correspondent
Sonya Braun is a community correspondent for Springfield North.