By Rev. Jessica Vaughan Lower
Special to the Tribune
It was an attempted turkey hostage situation.
As we were seated around the table, my father poised to carve the beautiful turkey that was just presented to the room, a newcomer to our Thanksgiving traditions spoke up.
“Shouldn’t we all say something that we are grateful for before we eat?”
My father looked up from the golden bird, carving knife in hand, to check in with my mother, who gave a nearly imperceptible shrug. “I think that would work fine as dinner conversation,” my dad responded, just as he made the first slice. There was a slight exhale of relief from the majority of the table, myself included.
Recent research has found that three in five Americans would rather do anything other than think about gratitude on Thanksgiving. One of the causes of our gratitude reluctance might be because 71% of Americans report that their feelings of stress throughout the holiday season begin on Thanksgiving Day. But author Diana Butler Bass is more inclined to believe that we are resistant to dwell on our gratitude because true gratitude cannot be demanded or coerced.
Butler Bass, author of “Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks,” notes that there are two experiences of gratitude:
1) Gratitude as a feeling — like when we wake up to a beautiful sunrise or receive an unexpected gift.
2) Gratitude as an ethical choice we make, like donating money following a bonus at work. Butler Bass affirms that both are important. And yet, she notes that there often exists a gap between the two. Many of us feel gratitude as individuals, but struggle to connect that feeling of gratitude into our choices and public life.
So how can we increase our practice of gratitude, both in feeling and in choice, without creating the gratitude hostage situation that many of us encounter each Thanksgiving?
Butler Bass offers a simple experiment to our Thanksgiving rituals. She suggests that, instead of asking or answering the question, “What are you grateful for?”— which often commodifies gratitude — we choose to change the preposition. What have you been grateful through? What have you been grateful in? Who are you grateful to? Is there anything or anyone we are grateful with?
As we begin to shape our language about gratitude to reflect more honestly our experience, rather than speaking only about gratitude as commodity, perhaps we will minimize the instances of turkey hostage situations that trigger many of us to dread sharing our gratitude.
Vaughn Lower is head pastor of San Marino Community Church.
