Reasons to give thanks

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I love what Erma Bombeck said about Turkey Day: "Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Halftimes take 12 minutes. This is not coincidence." She also said, "On this wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November, no one diets. I mean, why else would we call it Thanksgiving?"In my average American family (where we all got along, when we didn't want to kill each other), Thanksgiving was a small affair. Everyone engaged in the ritual preparation for the evening meal. The guys would watch the game, and the ladies would tell us to stay out of the kitchen and not to spoil our dinner by munching out on Tostitos. Just for the record, we also did the dishes.It was a day for making one another feel good and for expressing and sharing that special kind of mutual gratitude. For children, that's not the easiest of concepts to absorb, and some adults have a little difficulty taking it in as well.When life is not giving you what you think you want, it can be challenging to feel good about Thanksgiving or anything else. That's why this day serves as an important reminder that no matter how bad things get, being alive is still better than the alternative.Even if you're not in a mood to celebrate, or have no one to share the day with, it makes sense to find some way to feel grateful for what you have, no matter how insignificant it may feel at the moment. Remember, there are always those with less.I can think back to times when we barely had enough money for a Stouffer's frozen turkey dinner. This recollection makes even the humblest of Thanksgivings a celebration. Life should, in at least some little ways, get sweeter with time. Feeling grateful for even the small joys makes this journey we are all on a more fulfilling experience.Thanksgiving has the added significance of being a truly American holiday, and even though times are tough, we've never had as much to be thankful for as we do now.H.U. Westermayer said, "The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of Thanksgiving." On this day, more than most, we need to savor our lives, what we have, and each other.Things may never be perfect. This fact can help us keep moving in a forward direction. Sure we can get stuck every now and then, but the truth is that we can always remember a time when things were not as good as they are now. Doing so makes it easy to give thanks.(Dr. Barton Goldsmith, a marriage and family therapist in Westlake Village, Calif., is the author of "Emotional Fitness for Couples."E-mail him at Barton(at)BartonGoldsmith.com)