To me, every day is like a perpetual Thanksgiving.

I like to live my life in constant gratitude, after all, I personally have been through a lot in my short 30-something years and feel that I have a lot to be grateful for. I even call my home, which is my fortress, a “cornucopia” sometimes: with all of the cozy lighting and colorful items, how can you go wrong?

So, Thanksgiving is not exactly a shock to me: I don’t exist on autopilot and then suddenly stop in my tracks on November 26th and go, “Whoa! Maybe I should give thanks today.”

Gratitude is a practice, a lifestyle, a prayer, and a near constant one. But, no shame if you’re indeed a Thanksgiving deer in the headlights type, one that does need to take a moment to say thanks, newly and renewably on this holiday.

There’s something about Thanksgiving that admittedly draws me in: the turkeys, the cornucopia, the family gatherings, the moments of overt or even quiet mass gratitude. Gratitude is important, yet as a gratitude practicer, Thanksgiving should be practiced every day of the year. It’s sort of like a gluttonous perpetual Christmas season; if you make gratitude available to you more often, you get really shiny, sort of like a modern Santa Claus type of figure.

Appreciation of what you have, and adding in a dash of self-acceptance and contentment can do wonders for the psyche.

What is Thanksgiving truly about? What kind of gratitude would please the Thanksgiving turkey deities? On Thanksgiving, I love to appreciate Native American culture and customs. I remember my elementary school education well; as an Anglo-Saxon young student, I was taught that the Native Americans were savages, violent, and uncivilized. Yet, as I get older I continually feel that their whole culture truly got the shaft; though I love the country I was born into, I often wonder what would have happened to the Native Americans if they had continued to possess the land. America, in my opinion, lacks Native American culture, yet there is so much wisdom, joy, and pain rife in their people’s history—so much wisdom to be gleaned from studying their culture and religious beliefs.

So, as you eat turkey and celebrate a day of peace and give thanks for all that you have and continue to have, perhaps give thought to a continual Thanksgiving throughout the year, a symbiotic communion between cultures, the plight of the Native Americans.

With thanks, have a happy Thanksgiving! Wishing you all the best throughout the coming season and year.

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