Thanksgiving 2024: Gratitude and Resentment

Thanksgiving in North America

Today it is Thanksgiving in Canada. Even though Joyce and I live in West Michigan, we will be celebrating with friends over a turkey dinner at our home in Grand Rapids. Many of us are dual citizens of the United States and Canada. So we get to celebrate the occasion twice: Canadian Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October, and American Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November.

Photo by Genna Weber on Unsplash

During the twenty plus years Joyce and I lived in Canada, we came to prefer having Thanksgiving in early October. The weather then is usually mild. Trees are arrayed in multicolored splendor. And harvest time, traditionally a major reason for celebrating this occasion, has recently ended. (As we learned when we lived in Berlin in the late 1970s, the equivalent day in Germany is called Erntedankfest, the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival; it occurs on the first Sunday of October.) 

Moreover, gatherings of family and friends in early October lend themselves to relaxed fellowship. The date avoids the tensions that beset a late-November observance. American Thanksgiving occurs after national elections have been held, and it launches year-end shopping sprees: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday follow in quick succession.

Such pressures are there by design. President Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November as a day to seek national unity in the midst of the Civil War. In 1939, as the Great Depression dragged on, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the date one week earlier. He wanted to boost the economy by creating seven more days for Christmas shopping. Roosevelt’s move was controversial—opponents dubbed the new date “Franksgiving.” Two years later it was decided to establish the fourth Thursday in November as the national holiday, even when the month has five Thursdays. Yet that did not lessen either the commercial impetus or the political pressure.

Why Celebrate?

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Regardless of when Thanksgiving occurs, the question remains why we should celebrate it. Most of us are not directly involved in harvesting crops. There are other holidays when we can celebrate our countries, as I’ve discussed in the blog posts Common Ground and Genuine Patriotism and the Stanley Cup. And fewer and fewer of us have the religious commitments that once motivated people, in the words of one Thanksgiving hymn, to “gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing.”

So, apart from the fact that it’s a national holiday and an established tradition, why should Canadians and Americans continue to celebrate Thanksgiving? My tentative answer takes us back to my previous blog post. There, reflecting on the recent experience of Tent Camping in the Late Summer Sunlight, I said I want to live into the future in gratitude and affection. Perhaps Thanksgiving can be an occasion when, together with family members and friends, we can express the gratitude with which we hope to live each day. Let me explain.

Gratitude

Philosophers ask what gratitude is, when it is called for, and why it matters. We have enough disagreements on each question that the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes a substantial entry about them, written by Tony Manela, titled “Gratitude.” Although aware of these debates, I don’t plan to discuss them. Rather, let me simply say how I understand the topic.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

At bottom, it seems to me, gratitude is a response of thankfulness for what we perceive and receive as a gift. Although the gift-giver often is a fellow human being—a colleague, a neighbor, a lover, a friend—we do not need to limit our gratitude to such interpersonal relations. We can have this response toward institutions, toward music and art, toward the Earth, and toward the divine. For we can experience all of these as sources of good things that sustain and enrich our lives.

“Response” is a broad term, deliberately so. Although we might want to figure out whether certain instances of gratitude are primarily emotions or attitudes or actions or dispositions, the response of thankfulness usually involves all of these and more. Gratitude is not so much a particular occurrence as it is a way of living. If I thank you for remembering my birthday, that might look like an act of gratitude. If at the same time I don’t really care about who you are, however, and why you extend your congratulations, then that would cast doubt on whether I’m truly grateful.

Gratitude is a life-orientation involving the entire person or community that receives a gift. It makes sense that countries like Canada and the United States set aside at least one day each year when people can remember and celebrate the sources of goodness in their lives. 

Generalized Resentment

Having said that, I also recognize just how difficult it is not only to live in gratitude but also to celebrate Thanksgiving. Wildfires and hurricanes, exacerbated by human-induced climate change, wreak havoc in so many places and upend so many lives. Unending wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan cause unbearable suffering. Racism, poverty, homelessness, and suicide are on the increase, even as the captains of digital capitalism gather unimaginable wealth and power. Amid the swirl of social media misinformation and disinformation, political differences have become deep divides.

Indeed, for many North Americans, resentment, the opposite of gratitude, sets the direction of their lives. They practice the politics and foster the culture of generalized resentment. By generalized resentment I mean an indiscriminate response of ongoing bitterness for what is perceived and received as an insult or injury.

Photo by Kamil Macniak

Most of us have experienced resentment to some degree when someone shows us disrespect or treats us unfairly. We tend to get over it, however, especially if our offenders apologize or we find ways to forgive them.

But generalized resentment is hard to get over. For it does not primarily respond to specific offenses by particular people. Nor does it seek either apology or forgiveness. Instead, it regards an entire class of people or nexus of institutions as inherently offensive, as both “out to get us” and irredeemably evil. It’s not hard to see how this can play out in conspiracy theories, hate speech, and zero-sum politics.

Recommitment

What is hard to see is how a politics and culture of generalized resentment would be compatible with lives of gratitude. If we perpetually take offense at the people and institutions that surround us, how can we cultivate thankfulness for the gifts these offer? Conversely, if we live in thankfulness for the goodness that sustains and enriches us, how can we participate in the bitter politics and culture of generalized resentment?

Thanksgiving 2024 is an excellent time for all of us to reflect on such questions. It’s also a good time, if we are so inclined, to recommit to living in gratitude, despite and amid the social ills that surround us. And so I wish all of my readers, Happy Thanksgiving!