Thanksgiving Gratitude​: Opening Your Heart To Those You Love

While your mind might be swimming with ways to brine a turkey and how to make the best pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving gratitude is the real reason for the season. The holiday season as a whole is meant to be about deeper meanings, though materialistic modern celebrations have taken center stage. And while we could all agree that it pays to be grateful, sometimes we wait for a holiday like Thanksgiving to roll around before we stop and consider the meaning of gratitude or its importance.

Did you know that incorporating a daily gratitude practice can have measurable impacts on your physical and emotional health? Harvard even lists benefits ranging from a lower risk of dying to improved emotional and social well-being, and plenty in between. You can tune into Thanksgiving gratitude or daily gratitude with questions and practices — more on that below!

Jump to Section:

• Is Thanksgiving About Gratitude?
• How to Express Gratitude at Thanksgiving
• Making a Thanksgiving Gratitude Tree
• Gratitude and Thanksgiving Bible Verses 

Is Thanksgiving About Gratitude?

Fundamentally, Thanksgiving is about gratitude, and you can tell just by the name. While a lot of time and effort is spent on the menu and everything else that comes along with hosting Thanksgiving, the core of the holiday doesn't center around food. Whether you're hosting or making the trek to a loved one's home, utilize that time together to slow down and appreciate everything. The food on the table, the time, money, and effort it took to get there, and the precious time with family and friends, where your purpose is to share joy and fond memories. 

Your Thanksgiving trivia questions can remind you of the holiday's roots: how the colonists sat down for a meal with the natives, "broke bread," and created a political alliance of sorts. This Thanksgiving, it's about modern applications and finding peace and tranquility in our hectic lives. 

Unlike Christmas, which is purely a religious occasion, Thanksgiving doesn't have clear religious roots. But that doesn't mean you can't tie it together with your faith. There are many prayers and bible verses that tie into Thanksgiving gratitude to make the day feel spiritually special. In fact, while many of us long for Christmas and the holiday season, it can be a time of great stress and overwhelm for so many.

Thanksgiving gratitude isn't about gifts or shopping, so you can truly spend all your energy feeling grateful for what you have. It's easy to get caught up and let this holiday feel like another stressor, but this year, challenge yourself to focus on the real meaning behind Thanksgiving — gratitude. 

How to Express Gratitude at Thanksgiving

There are many Thanksgiving gratitude practices to help everyone get in the right headspace. Upon sitting down at the table for your meal, before or after a Thanksgiving prayer, have everyone say one thing they are grateful for. Of course, the prayer itself is a powerful and specific form of Thanksgiving gratitude that many faiths can participate in. Then, there are physical representations, like writing notes or creating a Thanksgiving gratitude tree, which makes for a great Thanksgiving decoration idea, too.

What Is a Powerful Message Of Gratitude For Thanksgiving?

Crafting the most powerful messages of gratitude for Thanksgiving takes the ability to slow down and zoom out on your life. You can be grateful for all things big and small, but for a powerful message that resonates with others at your table, you want something that hits home. Instead of focusing on physical goods, consider the invisible things like your health and your relationships. Other intangible things, like the lessons you have learned in life, are a worthwhile focus for Thanksgiving gratitude.

If you're not sure where to begin focusing on Thanksgiving gratitude and expressing it, your faith can be a good starting point. There are many Bible verses about being grateful for this life.   

Making a Thanksgiving Gratitude Tree Or Gratitude Wall

If you've never made a Thanksgiving gratitude tree before, it's incredibly simple and straightforward. Much like a display in a school or hospital, each person merely pins their wish or message onto a larger display, writing what they're grateful for on a "leave." This Thanksgiving gratitude project is, of course, modeled after a beautiful Fall tree in all its colorful glory. Start by creating the body of the tree, with branches and a trunk. For large gatherings, make more or larger branches so you can fit more "leaves".  

Next, the most important part is having lots of little paper leaf cut-outs to paste on your tree. Using stencils or pre-made leaves, each person writes something they are grateful for on a leaf and tapes or pins it on the branches. Feel free to add more than one, as the tree gets more and more beautiful as it fills with color and messages of Thanksgiving gratitude. You can spend some time doing this before or after the meal for a nice Thanksgiving activity for all ages.

Lacking time in your schedule to make an entire tree, then search for easier and simpler gratitude wall ideas that use the same concept but are a bit more practical. 

Gratitude and Thanksgiving Bible Verses

While Thanksgiving doesn't traditionally have a religious component, its focus on gratitude and blessings makes it a natural fit for faith. The Bible is full of verses that call into focus the practice of being grateful and highlight the many blessings each of us has in our lives. Here are a few we love:

• "A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed." Proverbs 11:25 is all about getting into the spirit of generosity — a hallmark of the holiday season. We all have much to be thankful for, and it can help to highlight this when we consider others who are less fortunate and how we can share our blessings with them. 
• "Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations." Psalms 100:4-5 bring to the forefront your faith as something to be thankful for, and, in return, God's faithfulness to you. 
• "Let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken" (Hebrews 12:28). This verse reminds us that the kingdom of heaven will be there no matter what; it's about asking for forgiveness for our shortcomings. 
• "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving" Ephesians 5:4. It is just as important to consider the other ways we use our mouths, and to focus on speaking joy, love and thanksgiving rather than negativity. This might mean being a little more mindful with your Thanksgiving jokes and keeping them clean. 

While it would certainly be the ultimate goal to maintain this level of commitment to Thanksgiving gratitude each and every day, many of us fall out of practice over time. The holidays are a wonderful time for calibration, reminding each of us to shift our internal and external focus to positivity and gratitude.

This year, whether you're hosting your own Thanksgiving celebration or simply bringing the pie to your best friend's house, we can all play a role in shifting the focus back to Thanksgiving gratitude. Bringing a thoughtful Thanksgiving gift to the host or hostess is a great place to start. Think along the lines of a gratitude journal or jar. You can even bring the supplies to set up a gratitude tree.

For even more gift ideas to share your gratitude with those you love, check out other experiences happening on Classpop!