Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a special day in much of North America for dining with the greater group of family and friends, and for thanking God for bounty. Further north it is wisely celebrated in October. However, most celebrate it on the last Thursday of the month, coming right up. It is also celebrated on Grenada in October. The North American Thanksgiving has also moved to Liberia (celebrated on the first Thursday of November).

Around the world

Around the world are similar celebrations and family gatherings.

Asian gatherings tend to be related to harvest and include Chuseok, Mid-Autumn Festival and Pongal. There are also family gatherings around the year: Lunar New Year, Obon, Diwali.

Corpus Christi in South America includes family gathering, but is not harvest related.

Small communities have town founding celebrations, but there the gatherings are more related to community that family. In Brazil and many African local communities, there are small local celebrations of various emphasis on celebrating together.

We all know that there is no Thanksgiving in Australia. Or might there be? Norfolk Island is a territory far to the east of the continent where Thanksgiving is celebrated—not on the last Thursday of November, that would be too American—on the last Wednesday of November. For the most part, Australians save up all that gathering for Christmas!

Thanking God

Many celebrations include or emphasize thanking God. The spiritual aspect shows up heavily in other celebrations in Europe such as Erntedankfest, a church-based celebration of harvest with community meals, and Dankdag, a day of prayer and worship. We see this also in Sukkot. (Hmmm. Add these to the celebrations around the world.)

In this spiritual view, gatherers focus on that received. This gratitude contributes to the closeness of those gathering, their ability to have conversation.

Thanksgiving on the 4th Thursday

Emphasis is on the Thanksgiving of North America in this post. However, you might recognize much of what is described here in similar celebrations such as the three-day Chuseok.

Coming alongside

A wonderful binding in family gatherings is coming alongside, the coming together with focus on accomplishing a goal. This is magnified when the goal is a good goal, especially. We see this in getting the big van running, bringing the chairs from storage, cleaning the hanger, warehouse, big room or backyard, and setting the table, but mostly it is in the food preparation. In this is an anticipation. It is collaborative and also repetitive and almost meditative.

Psychologists, sociologists and, yes, food anthropologists see these patterns:

1. Rituals, even setting the table properly, create meaning and strengthen bonds. The repetitive traditional nature of preparation activities provides comfort and continuity through generations. Activating the basal ganglia provides what the brain needs in times of stress and uncertainty. Rituals reduce anxiety by shifting our brain attention from the limbic brain (emotional center) to the prefrontal cortex, creating a framework to contain emotions.
2. Anticipation of positive events often brings much more happiness than the event itself.
3. Collective effervescence is that energy, that sense of unity, when people work together toward shared goals.
4. Service, where labor becomes the language of love, in cleaning, organizing and cooking, is the way we express love and caring, where the investment signals importance and value of another.
5. Intergenerational knowledge transfer is found in how cooking together transmits cultural knowledge, values and family history, all opening eyes to other understanding of where we came from, what we have in common.
6. Social cohesion!
7. Remembering activities, items and smells activates the amygdala creating emotional responses. I hope they are good ones. The amygdala is also where we detect threats. This is where other mechanisms tune that emotional response.
8. Working together is like hugging; it releases oxytocin it creates feelings of loving and of being loved.

This is good stuff. We can plan for this, gently encourage this. In this is fruitful dialogue; coming out of this is continued fruitful dialog.

Food

The tradition is turkey and stuffing with maybe mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole with tiny marshmallows, green bean casserole and pie. (This pie is not a lie.) The pie is typically pumpkin pie, but apple and pecan pies show up. Remember the discussion on groupishness and tribalism? Well, we can have our little debates about which pie is better, but we can also keep it fun and harmless.

Of course, your family might have other traditions or you are making up your own. That is wonderful.

Oh. I forgot the dinner rolls in the list above. Dinner rolls. Or skip them and save room for pie.

What goes wrong

Thanksgiving gatherings create the perfect storm for family tension.

Insert here your own list of ingrained family scripts, generational and regional conflicts, forced hours of proximity, alcohol, long manipulative prayers, lack of respect, churching instead of helping, and captive audience demagogy.

What can we do?

Hosts

Hosts can set the tone with the welcoming greetings. Also, assigned seating can help antagonists apart but without closing the door on conversation. Plan on various signaling, scheduling and serving methods for the pie. The protection of all of your guests is part of your hosting duties.

Leaders

Family leaders can take time and create conversational redirects beforehand. Those cards can be played as needed. Also, if people listen when the leader stands, the leader can say, "I want to listen to just Timmy on this." or "I feel like pie. Let's repair to the living room for that."

All

All of us can learn how to effect bridging, use positive (perhaps lightly deprecating) humor, use the curious question, name the dynamic and swivel conjunctions to validate rather negate, use positive steelmaning, share values not positions. Whatever all of those are.

Enable post-conflict repair. Seek it yourself. Allow others to do so when it is the right time. This should be very soon. I know this feel so manipulative, but discourage people (including yourself) from retiring before repair. Repair is best done soon.

Manage yourself. (Oh, I know this can be hard.) You have a year before next thanksgiving. What can you learn about people and what is important before then. Besides improving ourselves we can use immediate self-governing: take deep breaths, seek connection not winning, recognize when you need a break and plan for how you do that, and pause, never take the bait. Recognize this: when you feel threatened your frontal cortex goes offline, making logical thinking harder.

Here is the ultimate. (Disagree? Comment.) Unless one at the table or in the family is being attacked, do this: Nothing. Fully ignore bad statements. Don't say you are ignoring the statement or make a big show of ignoring it. Take another bite. Reach for the chocolate in the center of the table. Simply say what is on you mind:

When do we have pie?

Expectations

Expect great fun and be ready for the worse. By "be ready" I mean planning, even (when there is time) studying.

Listening Day

Many people take the day after Thanksgiving to engage in dangerous and combative shopping. This can be fun for some. Not for me.

The day after Thanksgiving Day is National Listening Day. I suppose this can apply to any day following a great family dinner in any of the cultural settings mentioned above.

This is a storytelling day. Telling stories is a cool skill.

Moreover, it is a day for recording those stories—for tomorrow and for generations. It is a day for listening.

I wish you a warm Thanksgiving.

Pie.