On thanksgiving

The Thanksgiving Holiday is here, which may not mean much to my fellow Brits but it’s a huge deal across the Atlantic, where the American part of my family live.

For many Americans, Thanksgiving is a day off from work, filled with family, celebration and lots of delicious American foodie favourites like roast turkey and cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and baked sweet potato, cornbread, yams, pecan pie, and many other things besides…

But perhaps more than anything, it’s a time for gathering family, friends and loved ones together to practice thankfulness for life’s many rich blessings.

I have to admit that I always feel a little jealous of my American family and friends during the Thanksgiving holiday period. Because although we Brit’s get more holidays, we don’t have a thanksgiving for the founding of our nation, or set aside a day to remember the many blessings we enjoy.

And I just think it’s such a lovely idea, that I almost want to adopt it as a ritual of my own!

Everyday gratitude

But at the same time, I am reminded that we shouldn’t actually need a national holiday in order to remember to practice gratitude. We should give thanks ‘for everything, in all circumstances’.

Because the truth is that even on those hard days, when we don’t feel like we have much to be grateful for, we actually have so much. And once you start recalling it all, the list could go on and on…

But in tandem with my love of all things thanksgiving, I also find it kind of a sad reflection of our times that the tradition now coincides with the rather more cynical Black Friday too.

And not only has this tradition travelled across the Atlantic to become a staple amongst UK retailers too, but it also seems to have expanded to cover an entire week long period with cyber Monday also tagging on…

I know that it’s just marketers wanting to maximise pre-Christmas sales during the thanksgiving holiday when Americans are off work. But I still think it’s such a shame because to me it seems entirely at odds with the whole concept of Thanksgiving.

Is it just me, or have we lost something important here? Because essentially, what was created as a holiday of gratitude and thanksgiving for our plenty, has been hijacked by a marketing tour de force, synonymous with insatiable appetite for buying more stuff.

A heart position

And I’m not saying that Black Friday is inherently bad either. I mean, if you do manage to grab yourself some bargains and save a few pounds on your Christmas shopping list this year, well who’s to complain about that? I guess it’s just the juxtaposition of the two that bothers me so much, and the way that the second has hijacked the former.

But beyond the fact that many of the so-called ‘price cuts’ are actually just price hikes, followed by price slashes, dressed up to look like savings, the biggest issue I have remains the underlining focus shift, away from a heart position of gratitude for what we have already been blessed with, to one of wanting more.

When is it enough?

It’s really hard to practice moderation when you’re constantly surrounded by excess, but I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the simple practice of thankfulness is the only real answer to an economic system that’s so invested in making us want to consume more – and not just over the thanksgiving holiday either.

I recently read that here in the UK pre-Christmas household debt figures last November peaked at an incredible £1.5 trillion, fuelled at least in part by Black Friday promotions and people taking on extra credit card debt to buy stuff they can’t really afford and don’t really need for Christmas.

I know that lots of people find the Bible out-dated but I was raised reading it by Christian parents and parts of it still hold a lot of wisdom and truth for me.

And in fact, as I began writing this blog I was reminded of this old Biblical proverb which simply says this:

‘Enjoy what you have rather than always desiring what you don’t have. Just dreaming about nice things is meaningless; like chasing the wind.’

I love this extract, because for me, it cuts right to the heart of the issue. Do I enjoy what I already have in life and practice thankfulness for it, or do I waste too much of my time and mental energy, lusting after and working towards gaining what I don’t yet possess instead?

If I’m honest, I find it a constant challenge for me to get the work/life balance right in our family. I mean, how many hours do my husband and I need to work to make enough money to sustain our chosen lifestyle? And how much money do we really need to amass to be comfortable and secure?

How nice a car? How big a house? How many trips, holidays, and nice meals out do we need to be happy? How many nice things do we really want to own, and at what expense to our own health and wellbeing? And is any of it ever really more important than just being with our four year old son?

The truth is that there will always be more to lust after in this world. But also, I already have more than enough materially… more than I could ever possibly need.

So over this thanksgiving and Christmas season, we’re choosing to cut back a bit, my family and I. We’re going to invest less of our money in stuff, and more in spending time together and making memories instead.

To me, this feels like a good decision, because it’s more aligned to the way I want to live.

And even aside from all the environmental and social benefits of consuming less and buying more consciously, this decision helps to grow the kind of values I want to grow, such out giving over consuming; gratitude over desire, and time with people over just things.

Happy thanksgiving everyone!