Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. It’s celebrated here more simply as a harvest festival, without the national mythologizing that plays such an important role in US Thanksgiving celebrations. All the same, its roots in Anglophone Protestant Canada mean that both First Nations people and Francophones often have a complicated relationship to it. For secular Canadians, it is generally a chance to gather with family for a good meal and time together, but Thanksgiving services are still celebrated in churches on the closest Sunday, and especially in rural parishes it is still very much a big deal. Sarah and I will cook something nice and I’ll spend some extra time in prayer, giving thanks to God for all his gifts to me.
It occurs to me that the holiday of Thanksgiving (perhaps especially in its US version) and the very idea of gratitude itself have fallen on difficult times as of late, especially in progressive circles. Much of this is for good reason. Certainly the happy-Pilgrims-and-indigenous-people narrative underlying US Thanksgiving celebrations is largely mythology - and mythology which makes it hard for us to see the actual history of warfare, dispossession, constant treaty-breaking, and genocide which characterized westward expansion. More broadly, we are increasingly aware of the way that demands of gratitude can be weaponized to prevent people from objecting to unjust or unfair treatment. I think of my time as a union organizer, when at various times it was very obvious that bosses were trying to make their employees feel grateful to have a job at all as a way to avoid responding to worker complaints.
But in a somewhat analogous case to what I wrote about forgiveness for the last issue of Plough, I worry that we sometimes take justified concerns about the abuse of gratitude too far, and end up attacking the very notion of gratitude as a duty or or virtue to be cultivated at all. I am not sure that this brings us any sort of liberation so much as it isolates and atomizes us from each other, dissolving good bonds of obligation. And as Christians, God’s command to us is clear: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess 5:18).
Part of the problem, I think, is that we tend to understand gratitude primarily or entirely in affectual terms, as a feeling; we talk about “feeling thankful.” And when thankfulness is thought of in this way, an expectation of gratitude can indeed feel like an unjust imposition on someone’s emotional life (which isn’t entirely under their control anyway). Now, I don’t want to deny that feeling or affect is involved in thankfulness. But interestingly, a lot of classical thought about gratitude thinks of it not as a passion but as a virtue, not primarily a matter of our immediate affective response but of our recognizing and responding appropriately to goods done to us (thus for example ST II-II q. 106). It is something you practice, something that you (with God’s help) get better at over time; insofar as it involves affect, the affect too is trained over time by the cultivation of the virtue of gratitude.
And this, it seems to me, is a much more productive way to think about gratitude than focusing on whether or not one does or should automatically “feel grateful.” This is true both because it avoids or at least limits evaluating gratitude in terms of proper emotional response (a problem pointed out by critics of the expectation of gratitude) while also preserving the notion of beneficence as creating connection and even bonds of obligation. I wrote in my Plough piece that, for all the ways forgiveness has been misused, a world without forgiveness is a grim one indeed. I think the same is true for gratitude. It’s not - and this is very important - that we ought to do good to others in order that they be grateful to us in turn, as I was reminded in a thoughtful sermon from Pastor Jean-Daniel O Donncada yesterday. We are, after all, called to imitate God, who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). But all the same, I worry that the criticism of general expectations of gratitude in response to well-doing is part and parcel of a discomfort with the very notion of binding obligations on each other, of owing others anything.
And, of course, we Christians can’t avoid the inspired words of Scripture to us: “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Gratitude towards God is at the center of the Christian life; the Protestant Reformers particularly construed it as such: for them, the whole Christian life is a response of grateful thanksgiving to the free gift of salvation given to us in Jesus Christ and grasped by faith. And even those who do not construe salvation as Protestants do hold that both our creation and our salvation are gifts from God for which we owe him thanks and praise. After all, the principal act of worship on Sundays for most Christians is the Holy Eucharist, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving! Now, to say that gratitude in general and gratitude towards God in particular are at the heart of Christian life doesn’t mean that we must always have an emotional life characterized by overflowing joy towards God; a quick perusal of the psalms puts that to rest. It certainly does not mean responding to people in situations of hurt or distress by enjoining them immediately to thankfulness. But the centrality of gratitude is still there.
I am having a somewhat difficult time in ministry at the moment, for reasons that are not appropriate for me to air in public (although I certainly welcome your prayers). I was having a conversation with a colleague about some of my struggles and he reminded me of this verse, reminded me of our Christian duty to cultivate and express gratitude, first and foremost in relation to God but in relation to others as well. It isn’t something that always comes easily to me. I can incline to holding grudges; there is a part of me that enjoys nursing my wounds, generating a cozy little feeling of self-righteousness when I consider the ways that I have been wronged. But at the end of the day, while I think it is important for people to be honest about feelings of hurt and appropriate to seek redress, I don’t want to be imprisoned in a solitary little cell of graceless, ungrateful self-righteousness. It isn’t pleasant for the people around me, and ultimately isn’t a pleasant sort of person to be. I want to be someone who is known for gratefulness, above all towards God but also towards those many others who have done me good - and perhaps someday even towards those who have done me wrong, for giving me an opportunity to cleave closer to Christ in my suffering.
And so this Thanksgiving, I am making an effort to consider before God the things I am grateful for, and to render thanks not only to God but to the people in my life to whom I owe thanks as well. I can’t imagine a better way to start than by one of my favorite prayers in the prayerbook, the general thanksgiving:
Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we thine unworthy servants
do give thee most humble and hearty thanks
for all thy goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all men.
We bless thee for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for thine inestimable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory. And, we beseech thee,
give us that due sense of all thy mercies,
that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful;
and that we show forth thy praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to thy service,
and by walking before thee
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost,
be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.
So, happy Thanksgiving, friends! I am thankful for each and every one of you!
Thank you! And prayers