Just so it doesn’t seem that all we ever do it berate and belittle the people of the lord, I offer the following rerun from last year. Happy T-day, everybody.

Thanksgiving and reflective appreciation

Hey, Happy Thanksgiving. As an atheist who doesn’t celebrate either Xmas or any of the mini-pseudo-Xmases, I still do embrace T-day. It’s the American holiday of home and hearth; and in spite of the name, a holiday where religious content seems — quite rightly — utterly optional. Lots of people take the opportunity to give literal thanks to their own flavor of imaginary friend; but the generic heart of the idea of thankfulness for the good things in your life seems pretty independent of whether you think that there’s anybody or thing to whom thanks are due.

Of course, you can be thankful to other people — like parents, friends, etc. — for things they’ve done. But there is a more generic notion of thankfulness or gratitude or something that is hard to say in the language we have without expressions that imply some agent as the one you’re thanking. (Not surprising, given the dominance of religion during the evolution of English and other Indo-European languages.) Surely the inclination to be reflectively appreciative of the good things in life — many of which are due to the random chaos of the world, like not being born into abject poverty, or having children who are by and large healthy, and so on — is an inclination that seems like a fine and healthy part of our human flourishing. I don’t think it should be cast aside just because some of the more obvious ways to state the impulse (”thankful”, “grateful”) are ones that seem to imply on the surface an agent who’s being thanked, or to whom gratitude is being given.

I’d be happy to have better ways to say it. (Suggestions?) But “giving thanks” isn’t so horrible — after all, I can believe that Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth without thinking that there is a fountain of youth that he sought, can’t I? Be careful with “quantifying in”, then, and enjoy yer turkey — and the other good things of your lives.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled sarcasm, cynicism, and ridicule.