When asked what you're thankful for, the wild list of cliches that flashes across your brain is only slightly less cliched than the question itself.
Thankful? For what? To whom? Of which? On when?
Your wine glass getting a little heavy, you scan that mental list and blurt out something to your table more canned than Auntie Peg's secret cranberry sauce.
It's hard to know who to thank for what. I suppose if you have a good job and a decent bird on your table, and you believe in [G]od, and that he took a hand in the above, good, you're done. Thanks, God, for this here feast before me and the fact that I can rack up debt at my own pace.
If you're sliding more into the agnostic or atheist camp, I guess maybe you could thank the universe, but then you're saying it's cosmic luck that got you this stuffed Hutterite gobbler and that 75 cent raise at Staples.
So, play it safe and thank the boss and the cook then?
Great. This would be the only time you thank your boss for employing you? On a stat? And this would be the only time worth thanking someone for cooking you a meal? You must be a joy at restaurants. And what if you cooked the meal yourself? Call up the good people at Sears for selling a functioning oven to you, or drop a "Thankya" to the Maytag man?
Maybe you decide to be more general.
Thanks for my family. You're glad basic genetics work and that you weren't abandoned. Do you thank them all the time? Are you not holding a quiet resentment toward your sister for hosting this fine meal at her house AGAIN because nobody will drive the extra half hour to your place?
My parents. Thanks to my parents for bringing me up right in a tough world.
How non-First World of you! Tell me, if your peer has been better--that is, more excessively--provided for than you (wealth, nurturing, boat trips), would that mean you shouldn't be as thankful because your parents didn't go far enough? Does that mean your children should only provide you with Thanks Lite if you can't do as well for them as your parents did for you?
Freedom. Thankful for my freedom.
Well, ignoring my last post's look at the duality of freedom, where did you get said freedom? Who you gonna thank, exactly? Elected officials? Lawmakers? Good-hearted cops? Libertarians?
Veterans. I'm gonna thank the veterans. The ones who fought in the morally-clear wars.
I'm completely in favour of this. Thank a veteran. That's a good reason to be thankful and a good person to thank. My worry is that you get it out of your system now, and then come November 1st, when Halloween is over and the long march to Christmas is foisted on us by Tim Horton's and Wal-Mart, you will skip that two minute pause on November 11 that the veterans most deserve. It's like you're going to do it now in case you forget later.
I'm all for saying thanks. I like good manners and I like to show appreciation when it's owed. But the giving of thanks requires a sort of symbiosis: thanker and thankee.
If you're going to insist on parading out your "I'm thankful for" list in speech, toast, Facebook post, better to find the person you thank, look 'em dead straight in the eye and tell 'em what exactly it is you're thanking 'em for. Mean it.
Seek your god, call your mom, applaud your cook.
Too many of our few good English phrases (I love you, I'm sorry, I'm proud of you) have been watered down by over-use and under-appreciation. Giving thanks is easy, and requires no risk of effort.
So mean it, turkey.
(Thanks very, very much for reading.)
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