Sometimes it seems as if the Christmas holiday season kicks off the moment the last Halloween trick-or-treater has selected their fun-size piece of candy and headed back down the sidewalk. The porch lights around the block go off for the night, and the next day the world is awash in red and green and ready to run headfirst into Christmas.
But what about Thanksgiving? Is it just a little blip of turkey and football in between our love of all things spooky and scary and merry and bright? Have we lost the reason for this holiday, turning it into just another day to eat and have a paid holiday from work?
Fortunately, there seems to be a resurgence of giving thanks happening all around us. I often see people on social media participating in a month-long tradition of giving thanks for something each day, and gratitude is a continually growing trend in self-help. Much more than being just a trend, though, gratitude can be a helpful tool in improving mental health and happiness.
The History of Thanksgiving
In school, we learned about the pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, and the feast that they shared with the Wampanoag Indians. The Wampanoag people actually had many seasonal celebrations of thanksgiving long before English settlers invited them to the famous dinner that we view as the first Thanksgiving in America. So while the pilgrims get the credit, the native Americans were giving thanks for their bounty long before we arrived. The Puritans also had their own customs and traditions in terms of giving thanks, although they were much more serious and based on religion than the holiday that has evolved over hundreds of years. According to www.plimoth.org, “Today’s national Thanksgiving celebration is a blend of two traditions: the New England custom of rejoicing after a successful harvest, based on ancient English harvest festivals; and the Puritan Thanksgiving, a solemn religious observance combining prayer and feasting.”
Sure, we’ve added in some things that neither the Wampanoag people nor the Puritan settlers would have ever dreamt of, like giant balloon characters passing in front of Macy’s Herald Square, physical contests of skill and strength involving Lions and Cowboys on television, and the best day of the year sales-wise for Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Ocean Spray. But at the heart of all of our current traditions is the spirit of being thankful for all of our blessings, no matter whether we thank a religious deity, a universal energy, or simply note these things for our own happiness.
The Science of Gratitude
Researchers studying mental health have been looking into the connection between gratitude and the brain for quite some time. One study followed three groups of college students who were seeking mental health counseling, and tracked their progress and whether or not they felt as if their mental health had improved after 12 weeks. One group received counseling, another group received counseling and practiced journaling, and a third group received counseling and practiced writing letters of gratitude. At the end of the study, the participants who had participated in writing the letters of gratitude reported greater improvements in their mental health than the other two groups.
In a different study, researchers performed MRIs on participants, and “found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making.”
Why Gratitude is Most Important When You Don’t Feel Like It
Unfortunately, Thanksgiving and other holidays can bring out feelings of loneliness and unhappiness in many people. The holidays can worsen feelings that your life is not where you would like it to be at that moment. Every holiday season we see people who are struggling with happiness at this time. It can easily look as if the rest of the world is participating in lavish celebrations, falling in love, spending time with all of their loved ones, and living life out of a Hallmark Channel movie. It can be very hard not to feel like your own life is a shit-show compared to the rest of the world that so clearly has its act together.
That’s exactly why giving thanks is so important. When you give thanks for even the most simple, basic things in your life, you can shift your focus and start to feel better, and not just in a “look how great my life is” Instagram ready sort of way, but deep down in the most authentic way.
Think about what went well today? What made you even the slightest bit joyful?
Waking up.
A warm shower.
Socks without holes.
Coffee.
If you can come up with five things, you are off to a great start. If you can come up with five things a day for a week, even better. The more you look at the small things, you will start to see the big blessings in your life.
Keeping a Gratitude Journal
Giving thanks does not have to be public. Sure, it’s nice to tell someone that you are thankful for their actions or their presence in your life, and you will undoubtedly help them feel better. But you are under no obligation to participate in the social media challenges or make your private thoughts public; this is for your own mental health, not anyone else’s. 
Keeping a gratitude journal is a great habit to start. You can start the day with your list, end the day with your list, or both. You can incorporate art journaling and be creative, or stick to a simple “thank you for this day” style list. Like any journal, this one is private, for your eyes only, there are not any rules or even a requirement that you write in it daily, although giving yourself a goal of every day for a week can help you turn this exercise into an integral part of your life.
What you might find once you start the habit of giving thanks for the small things is that you have more clarity in seeing the bigger blessings in your life. Once you start to notice all of the good things in your world, you end up feeling greater satisfaction and happiness with your life. And when that happens, you will have Thanksgiving every day, with or without the cream cheese and football.
Are you on the Forward Emotion email list? Click here to signup and receive updates about blog posts, events, and other information: Join the Email List
