THE OPEN DOOR: Make Thanksgiving your festival day
It seems like it’s been a long time since we “gathered round the table” with family and/or friends to eat and talk and laugh and share stories and — oh yes — maybe to give thanks too. I think it’s wonderful that we have at least one day each year to get together formally for this event.
But Thanksgiving, traditionally, has been a day set aside throughout the years as a day of remembering our blessings, such as they might be. I’d be surprised if even a small percent of folks give passing thought to enumerating their blessings on Thanksgiving, or even taking a moment before eating the big meal to say, “thank you” a few times. It’s quite easy to have such sentiments eclipsed by parades both big and small, football games, TV specials, turkey dinners and all the trimmings, the excitement of doing, and being with folks, and having fun at last.
Ostensibly, the day was designed to give thanks or feel gratitude for all our blessings. In truth, not everyone feels blessed. Not everyone is able to be with family and/or friends for any number of reasons. Some folks that are with family might be with them in a difficult or sad scenario; many are themselves ill. As a people, we tend to generalize, so we don’t really often zero in on the particulars. Not everyone looks forward to holidays for any number of reasons, including current events in their lives, or past occurrences that managed to spoil future ones.
All of this takes nothing away from the traditional observance of what I believe should really be named, “The Feast of Thanksgiving,” or “The Festival of Thanksgiving,” with all its trimmings. The day could be seen as the apex of our other 364 days, on each of which hopefully we did find something to be thankful for in our lives, no matter how small. Gratitude can be generated over the tiniest thing — sunshine breaking through on a grey day, an unexpected flower growing in our garden, the news that someone found what was lost, the fact that you or someone you know was feeling better on a given day, or found safe in a tough situation, and other bits of upliftment.
We’ve just passed through a period of time (and might yet have others), during which people suffered losses of all kinds on many levels, most of which had not been seen in a long time, if ever. We now know that we are in the midst of planet change, as well as societal change — the kind of change future generations will read about, just as we read about past centuries and events.
By now you’re probably wondering: “Hello? Where’s the upside of all this for a Thanksgiving holiday column?" It’s this: We still have so many opportunities to seek out occasions and be grateful for something, which in turn makes us feel better each time. A Harvard Health Publishing blog notes that “Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves. As a result, being grateful also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.”
Make Thanksgiving your festival day, but remember to be grateful for something every other day of the year as well. Poet Maya Angelou said it best: “This is a wonderful day; I have never seen this one before.”
Sandra Matuschka of Tiverton is a freelance writer and columnist. Send feedback and suggestions to smatuschka@cox.net or c/o The Newport Daily News, P.O. Box 420, Newport, RI 02840.
This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: THE OPEN DOOR: Make Thanksgiving your festival day
