The Key to Health and Happiness, Thanksgiving
The Key to Health and Happiness, Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving used to be my least favorite holiday. Compared to the substantive meaning and traditions behind Christmas and Easter, it always seemed to me to be more superficial: a day for stuffing our faces that we’ve nicknamed “Turkey Day”. The traditional Thanksgiving meal, however, is a reminder of a gathering that occurred between the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans and the early settlers that we call Pilgrims.
Following a tough winter and a severe food shortage, the Wampanoag taught the settlers how to plant and harvest in the new world. Those Puritan settlers then set aside a day of prayer and thanksgiving. President Abraham Lincoln designated the national holiday in 1863.
Knowing this history, “Turkey Day” still seemed a little blah to me. Ba humbug if you will. But I’m learning that I could stand to be more thankful, and that being grateful is a better way to live. And because this doesn’t always come naturally, we should set aside time to practice it.
Being grateful is the key to being happy. All the major self-help gurus attest to this. Tony Robins will even tell you that it is a precursor to being successful, in life, in our careers, and to being mentally healthy and physically fit.
Being thankful opens our minds to possibilities and opportunities that we tend to overlook when we focus our attention on our difficulties or disappointments. Focusing on our problems makes them seem larger and can cause us to become emotionally stuck. When we count our blessings instead, we find the strength to move forward and overcome obstacles.
Even when life is hard, we still have things we can be thankful for. What we focus our attention on determines our emotions. So being grateful improves our mood and outlook. In difficult times it gives us perspective and helps us feel better.
America’s founding generations practiced Thanksgiving by recognizing and giving thanks to God. Early Americans used generic terms for God that people of any, or no faith could understand, names like Providence and Great Benefactor. Twelve-step programs like AA, NA, and OA carry on the tradition, using terms like Higher Power, God of My Understanding, or even substituting the words “group consciousness” for those who prefer not to recognize a deity. Some like to call the universe their higher power. The benefits of being grateful are for the faithful and the non-religious alike.
Historically though, our founders recognized this greater power as an almighty and all-good, supernatural, person. Ben Franklin, at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, called on Congress to recognize this “Powerful Friend” that had come to our aid in the war for independence from Great Britain.
The designation of Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday in 1863 was actually a reiteration of our first President, George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, made in 1789, wherein he called on his new country to “acknowledge the providence of Almighty God…to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor”.
Happy Thanksgiving, pass the turkey and stuffing, please.