Happy Thanksgiving! 15 Things about Gratitude That Caught My Eye

1. George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789:

May [we] then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed — to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord — To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us — and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

2. From Dorothy Day in the Catholic Worker, November 1936:

From day to day we did not know where the next money to pay bills was coming from, but trusting to our cooperators, our readers throughout the country, we went on with the work. Now all our bills are paid and there is a renewed feeling of courage on the part of all those who are doing the work, a sense of confidence that the work is progressing.

This month of thanksgiving will indeed be one of gratitude to God. For health, for work to do, for the opportunities he has given us of service; we are deeply grateful, and it is a feeling that makes the heart swell with joy

During the summer when things were going especially hard in more ways than one, I grimly modified grace before meals: “We give Thee thanks, O Lord, for these Thy gifts, and for all our tribulations, from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.” One could know of certain knowledge that tribulations were matters of thanksgiving; that we were indeed privileged to share in the sufferings of Our Lord. So in this month of thanksgiving, we can be thankful for the trials of the past, the blessings of the present, and be heartily ready at the same time to embrace with joy any troubles the future may bring us.

3. Yuval Levin: “Gratitude in an Angry Time”

It is absolutely essential that we be careful not to let our outrage overcome our gratitude and drive us to adopt a distorted understanding of our own society — a kind of mirror image of the radicals’ view: that the malevolence of those we disagree with means that the society we possess in common has become thoroughly corrupted and has left us with nothing worth securing, and therefore nothing to lose. To be grateful is, in part, to know you have a lot to lose, and therefore also that you have a lot to offer the future, through acts of conservation and refinement, not just through acts of demolition.

4.

5. Leigh Snead: “After Dobbs: A Thanksgiving for the Brave Love of Adoption“

6. Abraham Lincoln, A proclamation for Thanksgiving Day, 1864:

It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year, defending us with his guardian care against unfriendly designs from abroad, and vouchsafing to us in his mercy many and signal victories over the enemy, who is of our own household. It has also pleased our heavenly Father to favor as well our citizens in their homes as our soldiers in their campus, and our sailors on the rivers and seas, with unusual health. He has largely augmented our free population by emancipation and by immigration, which he has opened to us new sources of wealth, and has crowned the labor of our working-men in every department of industry with abundant rewards. Moreover, he has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may be then, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to Almighty God, the beneficent Creator and Ruler of the Universe. And I do further recommend to my fellow- citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.

7. Peggy Noonan: “Home Again, and Home Again, America for Me”

Words of thanks to someone I knew well as a child:

I had an old great-aunt. She was my grandfather’s sister. Her name was Mary Jane Byrne but we called her Jane Jane. When I first encountered her, in the 1950s, I was a little child and she was ancient — about 60.

She lived in New York and went to a local parish, St. Vincent Ferrer. When I was little she told me it was the pennies of immigrants that made that great church. I asked why they did that. She said, “To show love for God. And to show the Protestants we’re here, and we have real estate too.”

She came to America about 1915, an Irish immigrant girl of around 20 from a rocky little patch in the west of Ireland. She came by herself, landed at Ellis Island and went to Brooklyn like everyone else. She settled in a neighborhood near the old Navy Yard, where relatives put her up on the couch.

(Watch her full remarks at the Al Smith dinner here.)

8. 

9. Carl Trueman: “The Age of Ingratitude“

Are there abusive pastors, corrupt institutions, and evil parents out there? For sure. But many are not so, and most of us, if not all, have been the beneficiaries of countless acts of quiet kindness and patience from Christian pastors and organizations and friends. But gratitude for the many fine and kind Christian people, loving parents, and generous institutions out there doesn’t sell books or attract pageviews. It doesn’t build platforms as does the confected anger of both political extremes. And so we express little gratitude for these hidden lives — lives, I suspect, that are far more typical of reality than the simplistic blanket categories used in the sales pitches of the Ingratitude Industry.

There are numerous human attitudes that mark us off from the rest of the animal kingdom. Jealousy, envy, revenge: We can anthropomorphize animal behavior to fool ourselves into thinking that these phenomena can be found among rats or wolves or aardvarks. But in so doing we are simply reading the psychology of human intentions into instinctive animal behavior. And gratitude falls into this category. To be grateful is a human trait. More than that — to be grateful is to be human. For in gratitude we acknowledge that we are not isolated, autonomous individuals but are dependent upon others, a dependency in which we find joy and for which we are thankful.

Perhaps no modern philosopher captured this so beautifully as Sir Roger Scruton, in one of the last things he ever wrote. Dying of cancer at the end of a year that had seen a vicious and cynical campaign to ruin his reputation, he declared:

Falling to the bottom in my own country, I have been raised to the top elsewhere, and looking back over the sequence of events I can only be glad that I have lived long enough to see this happen. Coming close to death you begin to know what life means, and what it means is gratitude.

We live in an age marked by infantile ingratitude. And if Scruton is right, that means we live in an age when we do not really know how to live at all. Ingratitude has dehumanized us.

10. Bill McGurn: “A Diverse Thanksgiving without Affirmative Action“

For her Thanksgiving turkey, Asra Nomani uses spices common in her native India such as turmeric and paprika. Hung Cao, who arrived on these shores after the fall of Saigon, recalls how his mother’s Thanksgiving spread featured crispy duck and egg rolls. Shanghai-born Ying McCaskill uses the leftover turkey to create an American variant of spicy kou shui (“mouth-watering”) chicken.

What these people have in common is that they share the concerns that fueled the revolt in Northern Virginia against identity politics in education, which in turn helped propel Glenn Youngkin to the governorship in 2021. The countries they come from are vastly different — India, Vietnam and China — pointing to the absurdity of even lumping them together under a single category. But in Virginia’s public-school system they all see a troubling erosion of the principles that made America such a refuge for their families in the first place.

11. With help from Dr. Jeanne Safer: “Don’t Let Politics Ruin Your Relationships“

12. Randy Hain: “Choosing to Live Gratefully“

• Try to be grateful for our challenges, not just our blessings. Try looking at adversity as a source of helpful lessons rather than frustrating burdens to carry.
• Express gratitude at every opportunity. “I am grateful. . .” “I appreciate. . .” and a simple “Thank you” can never be overused and should be shared throughout the day when an appropriate opportunity arises.
• Make it memorable. Send a handwritten note of gratitude whenever possible.
• Be intentional. Place a reminder on the calendar each Friday morning to express gratitude for the people and blessings we have experienced during the week.
• Be grateful for EVERYTHING. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
• Always give thanks to God. Be grateful to God for the gift of our lives, for air in our lungs, the shining sun on our faces and for all Creation. Share this gratitude in prayer throughout the day. Author Donald DeMarco reminds us, “God’s generous presence in our lives lays claim to a form of gratitude that is never satisfied by the mere recitation of thanks, but requires us to express our gratitude in action. The kind of gratitude that God is hoping to find is one that includes a bond of friendship and a commitment to service.”

13.  “William F. Buckley’s Thanksgiving Pheasant with Chestnut Cornbread Stuffing“

14.  Francisco de Osuna (c. 1540), The Third Spiritual Alphabet:

We do not realize what is good until it is gone, and the loss we suffer is due to our insufficient thanks to the one who made the good things possible. Thus, our benefactors must wait until we lose their favors before they are repaid, for only the loss of good motivates us to recognize the past benefit and act to give thanks. It is undoubtedly very bad that lack of something rather than the thing itself impels us to action and that in our desire to possess we forget who made us possessors. The evil sense of ownership that mortals have makes us no better than the pigs that feast on the acorns beneath the oak tree yet never raise the snouts to see the source of their meal, nor do they care to know, as if it would make any difference to them!

Let us remember. . . . That it makes a great difference to see what we have received because, as Saint Gregory says, the greater the gifts, the greater our debt, and the more we need to have a carefully tallied receipt. What can benefit us most with respect to this is gratitude, so let us begin the journey to repay little by little all we owe to the One who has provided us every good thing, and in a single act of thanks our accomplishment will be twofold: to repay our debt and make ourselves worthy of greater gifts. As Cassiodorus says: “He who does not lose the things given him nor cease to esteem them deserves even greater gifts.”

15. Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.: “We thank you, O Lord: A Thanksgiving Day Grace“

Most merciful Father, your gifts of love are countless and your goodness infinite. On this Thanksgiving Day we come before you with gratitude for your kindness: open our hearts to concern for others so that we may share your gifts of loving service with all your people. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.