I love all of the holidays. I really do. But, there is something special about Thanksgiving. For one thing, it is a little less commercial than most of the other big holidays. We don’t hear “Thanksgiving music” everywhere starting in August. You rarely see inflatable “Thanksgiving characters” festooning front yards. (I have to admit, though, that I do love the festive lights that appear when daylight savings time ends).
Thanksgiving is just a bit more private. It gives us a chance to gather with friends and family members (with time off from work! At least for some of us). There is something comforting about the rituals of Thanksgiving dinner – the turkey, the gravy, the green bean casserole (making that was my specialty when I was a kid), the sweet potatoes, and other dishes that families share for this occasion. Foods can serve as “social glue”, facilitating our connections with other people and our culture (Rozin 2005).
Thanksgiving can be a contemplative time as well, by providing a time out to think about literally giving thanks for our blessings. You may have heard that gratitude is one of the positive attitudes that is associated with better mental and physical health, and seems to be really helpful for resilience to stress (e.g. Kumar 2021), including socio-economic stress (Hartano 2019). “Trait” gratitude is inversely related to depression and other negative affective states associated with chronic disease such as IBD (Sirois 2017). That is, trait gratitude associated with better mental and physical well-being.
What exactly is “trait gratitude? It has been defined as “a general tendency to recognize benefits, experience abundance, and acknowledge anything in the world – human and not human – with grateful emotion and expression of this emotion that fosters both personal well-being and well-being of others” (Frinking 2020). It seems to be the tendency to appreciate things in life, including the little things, and being routinely thankful for what blessings you have.
Gratitude is also a key component of mindfulness practice, and mindfulness-based therapies have shown impressive outcomes for a wide variety of conditions, especially psychological/psychiatric and inflammatory ones, such as fibromyalgia (Carniero 2025). “Gratitude Interventions”, which are structured programs designed to encourage people to practice gratitude can help people who might not be “naturally” grateful pick up the habit, have also found that this promotes resilience. Mindfulness practices, for which gratitude is a key component, are associated with better Quality of Life in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Christodoulou), and higher “resilience” scores are associated with less disease activity, less need for surgery, and overall better quality of life (Seghal 2022). In this way, maintaining positive attitudes, such as gratitude, can have a big effect on both mental and physical health.
How exactly gratitude improves health is not entirely worked out. Some studies have reported that gratitude is associated with lower inflammation, which would lead to less disease activity or symptoms, but the findings have been inconsistent. It has been suggested that “support-giving”, which is more reliably related to lower inflammation and tends to go along with gratitude, may be actually be responsible for the beneficial effects on the immune system sometimes seen to relate to gratitude (Moeieni 2019). Support-giving can mean providing emotional support for other people (“being there” for other people). It can also mean volunteering for civic groups or churches, or working in other ways to help the well-being of other people.
Both gratitude and support-giving can protect against situations that can give rise to loneliness, such as loss of family members, moving away from friends and family, or aging (Frinking 2020). Loneliness is an averse emotional experience associated with anxiety or sadness that is associated with a lack of social relationships. As we get older, it can be harder to make new friendships or maintain established ones. As you may have heard, experiencing loneliness is associated with increased inflammation, which can induce or exacerbate conditions such as pain or depression, and many other disease conditions (Park 2020).
The holidays can be an especially difficult time, when loneliness can “rear its ugly head”. For those of us who do have family and friends with whom we can share the holidays, they can be important times for us to engage in support-giving for acquaintances or neighbors who might be at risk for loneliness. Including people who might be alone during the holidays in your own festivities can help you both! When I was a child, my mother did invite people over for Thanksgiving if they might not have anywhere to go. My father worked for Boeing Aircraft Co. and one year (maybe in the early 1970s) two engineers from Japan were visiting the company during Thanksgiving. They joined us for dinner and what I remember the most was how much they ate: a lot! Later my father told us that our guests from Japan had asked the other engineers about what kind of holiday it was and what were you supposed to do? The other engineers told them that Thanksgiving was all about eating as much as you can.. So they did that. I only hope they enjoyed the food, as it would have been rather different than what they were likely used to.
Not all of us are blessed with family that we are compatible with or are local enough to celebrate a meal. But getting together with friends who may have similar circumstance for “Friendsgiving” is a wonderful way to celebrate the season, and be grateful for our friends!