An attitude of gratitude

IT IS UNUSUAL THAT so many Americans claim Thanksgiving as their favorite holiday. After all, despite their religiosity, most Americans are still wary of the government getting too involved in issues of private morality. And isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about? Beneath the pilgrims, pumpkin pies and family reunions, Thanksgiving is essentially a day that the federal government sets aside to encourage all Americans to do something virtuous: show gratitude.

Of course, most of our 10 national holidays are designed to make us feel grateful for one thing or the other. On Presidents Day, we’re supposed to think good thoughts about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. On Veterans Day, we are encouraged to remember those who have served in the armed forces. The Fourth of July, of course, is the day to be grateful for our nation’s independence. But Thanksgiving is different. We’re just supposed to be thankful, period.

The notion of a national day of thanks wasn’t always so vague. George Washington proclaimed one in 1789, advising citizens to be grateful to “that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” Then, in the midst of the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving Day as an annual national holiday, he asked Americans to be grateful for “the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nonetheless remembered mercy.”

This is not to say that all of the nation’s great men were in favor of a federally sanctioned holiday to give thanks to the Almighty. Because the Constitution bars the establishment of religion, Thomas Jefferson thought that only the states had the power to proclaim such feast days. James Madison believed that days of prayer created “scandal” for religion by associating it with politics. Meanwhile, John Adams, who twice declared national “fast days,” thought he lost his bid for reelection in 1800 because too many voters considered these observances to be a Presbyterian imposition on other Christian denominations.

Yet all of these men agreed that the federal government did have a duty to promote good behavior. They believed, as Washington put it in his first inaugural address, that “the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” Even the most secular among them wouldn’t object to what Thanksgiving has become. Because with or without the acknowledgement of a divine force, the expression of gratitude is a moral act that benefits society at large.

In the century before Christ, Cicero, the Roman orator, called gratitude “not the only greatest, but also the parent, of all the other virtues.” Indeed, throughout the ages, plenty of philosophers have considered gratitude to be the glue that binds people together. It is a sentiment that, once felt, obliges individuals to consider their interdependence with those around them. In 1908, German thinker Georg Simmel called gratitude “the moral memory of mankind.” Without it, he concluded, there could be no social equilibrium.

But perhaps most compelling are the words of Adam Smith -- yes, the very economist who argued that selfinterest was a more powerful force for good than benevolence. Smith considered gratitude to be a crucial source of social civility and stability. He wrote that “the duties of gratitude are perhaps the most sacred of all those which the beneficent virtues prescribe to us.” And while he believed that the market should be driven by self-interest, Smith nonetheless knew that a healthy society required its members to be more intimately linked. He even seemed to understand that the cold calculations of a market economy sometimes undermined the conditions that gave rise to the spontaneous expression of thanks.

Perhaps this is why -- in our hyper-capitalist society -- Americans appear more eager than ever to claim the simple pleasures of gratitude. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion of books on the subject. Psychologists are now finding that an attitude of gratitude can have beneficial effects on an individual’s emotional well-being. In 1998, a Gallup poll found that 95% of respondents said that expressing gratitude made them feel at least “somewhat happy,” and more than half said that it made them “extremely happy.”

Yet, like everything else, perhaps too much gratitude can be a bad thing. Won’t we lose our self-respect if we are always grateful to others? That’s why I’m glad the Christmas shopping season starts on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s time to buy things to give to people so that they can be grateful to us.