THERE is no feast of Thanksgiving in the British national or church calendars, but it seems to me a good thing for any nation to set aside a day for gratitude, which is, in truth, the root of every other virtue. I am more aware of the feast of Thanksgiving than I used to be because of my frequent visits to the United States and Canada; for the Canadians also have a Thanksgiving feast, though on a different day from the Americans’.

Like many national holidays, American Thanksgiving is not unproblematic or uncontested, both by those who dispute which state or group of settlers started it, and by those who now feel that it is tainted by its colonialist associations.

The present date, the last Thursday in November, was settled by Franklin D. Roosevelt only in 1939, and an agreed version of its origins was declared by John F. Kennedy, with his usual deft rhetoric, in 1963: “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together, and for the faith which united them with their God.”

Two key themes emerge from my conversations with American friends: the family get-together, and reaching out personally on Thanksgiving to people for whom one feels especially thankful. These seem to me two things worth doing at any time — at least annually — and it is good to have a day to remind one to do it.

The Thanksgiving family get-togethers, like our own Christmas ones, are sometimes a little fraught, and have become more so in the Trump years, my friends tell me, as American politics becomes ever more polarised, and, sometimes, the front line runs between the generations. But, nevertheless, everyone makes the effort, and I hear stories of misunderstandings cleared up, and even reconciliations, besides the inevitable arguments.

While I was composing the sonnets for Sounding the Seasons, I was being sent so many kind notes at Thanksgiving from American friends that I decided to include a sonnet of thanksgiving for them in the sequence, even though it’s not in our liturgical calendar. I included it with All Saints’ and All Souls’, which seemed to be a good fit. I am told that reciting it has become part of some people’s Thanksgiving tradition, and reproduce it here on the basis that we can give thanks for one another on any day we like:

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving starts with thanks for mere survival,
Just to have made it through another year
With everyone still breathing. But we share
So much beyond the outer roads we travel;
Our interweavings on a deeper level,
The modes of life embodied souls can share,
The unguessed blessings of our being here,
The warp and weft that no one can unravel.

So I give thanks for our deep coinherence
Inwoven in the web of God’s own grace,
Pulling us through the grave and gate of death.
I thank him for the truth behind appearance,
I thank him for his light in every face,
I thank him for you all, with every breath.