Thanksgiving As A Year Round Flavor

Do you have any Thanksgiving traditions? Growing up, our family would drive fifteen minutes and enjoy a delicious meal with our cousins and Meme. The football game would be playing in the background (in spite of the fact that no one really wanted to watch the Cowboys). The smells of turkey, apple pie and coffee wafted through the air. There was the obligatory family Bingo game, but with Meme supplying the prizes, everyone was a winner!

Is gratitude a year-round tradition in your family? A couple of weeks ago Chris Lynch wrote this on our blog:

Thanksgiving isn’t merely a holiday or something we focus on temporarily; it is a way of life for those who have been redeemed.¹

How convicting is that?! If a gratitude inspector spent the weekend with your family, would they conclude that gratitude is a way of life in your home? Thankfully, the Spirit can cultivate the attitude of thankfulness in anyone!

My wife and I have chosen to make gratitude a priority in our home. That doesn’t mean we are particularly good at gratitude. It does mean we recognize the importance of thankfulness and desire to see each person in our family become a thankful person.

Chris pointed out five Scriptural principles about thanksgiving and noted that another article could touch on “practical and creative ways to instigate” giving thanks. My goal in this article is to give four practical suggestions to stimulate gratitude in your family to make thanksgiving more than just a seasonal flavor.

“Thankful Things”

My wife and I agree that this has been the best and simplest practice to focus on gratitude. We have made giving thanks a regular part of our family devotion time. After reading a Bible passage and singing, we take turns giving thanks for something in our day.

Early on, one of our boys couldn’t see past his socks. He was probably two or three at the time, and when we would ask him what he was thankful for, he would freeze, look around, and say, “My socks”. That was a good start!

The boys tend to give thanks for whatever happened most recently, so whatever we did after dinner would be mentioned. But this habit causes us all to stop and think about what happened in our day.

Because this “God-ward routine” has been built into our family rhythm, we can encourage them to grow in their giving of thanks. Since thanks should be given to someone, recently we’ve encouraged the boys to specifically think about giving thanks to God or another person for something that happened, rather than just mentioning their favorite thing from the day.

Like any good family rhythm, this will probably take several attempts before it sticks, but we’ve benefited from this “Thankful Things” portion of the bedtime routine.

Teach them to say thank you.

At the risk of being too obvious, thanks giving must be expressed. Saying “thank you” is one way to push against the discontent and entitlement so common to our culture and to our hearts.

Saying “thank you” should be verbally given as much as possible. Rare is the child (or adult) who is too thankful. But expressing thanks should not be limited to what we say. In our fast-paced, video-streaming, instant gratification culture, having your kids take time to physically write a thank you note may be frustrating to them in the short-term but character-forming in the long-run. Start by having them write a thank you card after receiving something (like after Christmas or their birthday).

Model thankfulness yourself.

Perhaps the most basic, most underrated, more difficult practical step to helping your children be more thankful is to model it yourself. Be a thankful person! The old expression, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” doesn’t just apply to weird distant relatives. Your children watch you; they follow your example.

Could it be that our children are not really thankful because we as their parents are not really that thankful either? Though you can’t control your children or be thankful for them, you can at least set a good example for them, which removes this as a potential roadblock.

In addition to the suggestions under point 2, take a 21 day gratitude challenge. Each day pick a different person in your life and recognize their contributions to you. This will force you to look beyond the sensational to the regular, mundane things we do for one another. Then express your thanks, whether in a thank you card, a short text or email, or a phone call. For bonus points, look the person in the eye and say why you are thankful for them. (It’s harder than you think!)

Talk about what God has done.

Scripture entrusts the responsibility to pass on the knowledge of the Lord to fathers (Ps. 78:5–8, Eph. 6:4). Pointing out what God has done and giving thanks for it doesn’t take that long, but it impacts everyone. This is part of “in the way” parenting that Deuteronomy 6:7–9 encourages.

Just the other day our family had a significant answer to prayer, and over dinner we had a short discussion about it. The whole conversation probably took 45 seconds, but by identifying God’s work in our family and giving Him credit for it, we directed our hearts upward.

These small moments shape character. Make God’s work in your lives a regular conversation topic, and you’ll find that gratitude follows naturally.

Closing Thoughts

Like any other spiritual discipline, learning to give thanks will not come overnight. Steady progress is attainable as you practice these things and depend upon the Holy Spirit to do His transforming work in your family. Seek His empowerment so that “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col. 3:17)