How to be grateful this holiday season

Disclaimer: So…I meant to write this right after Thanksgiving, but obviously didn’t make time for it. Better late than never, though, right?

tldr: Be specific

One of my favorite Thanksgiving dinner traditions is to have everybody share what they’re thankful for. Unfortunately, people often share the same generic thing: “I’m grateful for my family” or “I’m grateful that everybody’s safe and healthy.” Which is fine, I guess, but it just feels so…trite. Not that you can’t be grateful for your family or your health, but if that’s the only thing you say, it feels like a missed opportunity to share more deeply about your life with close family and friends.

It probably matters less for friends and family you see more often, but for some family members Thanksgiving dinner is one of the few times a year I do get to see them, and it’s a bit disappointing if they offer up just a bland statement of how they’re “grateful for family.”

Maybe I’m being overly harsh, especially in the age of Covid when it is a blessing to just be together. Either way, that’s what prompted me to send an e-mail to my family to ask people to share more specifically about what they’re grateful for this year.

I thought about what to write, and came up with the following —

What are you thankful for this year that other people may not know?

This excludes what we’re of course thankful for: family, health, daily provisions. I would love to hear specific stories for things you’re grateful for, small or big, that I or other people may not know. If there’s something specific to your family, health, or daily provisions that you’re thankful for that other people may not know, you’re welcome to share that.

I went on to share about how I was grateful for the car accident I got into earlier this year, because nobody was hurt and it enabled me to get the car I have now, before prices started going crazy.

Although not everyone shared their Thanksgiving reflections, I was grateful for those that did, because I got a better snapshot of what they went through this year.

As a follow-up, for our Christmas Eve dinner yesterday I asked people to share what they were looking forward to in 2022. I’m glad I didn’t need to add any disclaimers, as I was generally satisfied with the responses I got as we went around the table.

If you can’t tell by now, I’m all about asking better questions that prompt more thoughtful responses from people I care about. I’m still learning what this looks like practically, and look forward to training more people to do the same in 2022.