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Today, people all over the United States are celebrating a national day of thanksgiving.  It’s a day of family, feasting, and football!

Actually, the traditions are as varied and diverse as the people who celebrate this day. While the traditional fare includes turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie, a visit to our dinner table will reveal black beans and rice, yuca, and flan for dessert. We’ll make the almost traditional turkey, but marinate it in mojo — no gravy!

The menu doesn’t matter — the point is to get together and enjoy each other’s company. And of course, to give thanks.

That’s something that is easy to do when things are going well, but a deeper and often bitter challenge when they are not going well. For every measure of joy in the world there’s the equivalent in human suffering and mourning.

Why then, offer thanksgiving?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reveals that

2648 Every joy and suffering, every event and need can become the matter for thanksgiving which, sharing in that of Christ, should fill one’s whole life: “Give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:18).

Indeed, there are many reasons to give thanks. My grandmother passed away this year after a very long battle with Alzheimer’s, but I am so thankful for her presence in my life and the joy she brought to my children. Our dinner table will have an empty place setting, as our oldest is away galavanting in New York City and marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade with the band, but we are excited and enjoying her adventures vicariously as she checks in and gives us updates. We miss our extended family in Miami, and will have a quiet and stress-free meal with our two younger children who are recovering from surgeries — one will hobble up to the table after knee surgery and the other will attempt to eat anything since she’s still feeling uncomfortable after surgery to correct her deviated septum. We are so very thankful for their doctors and the successful surgeries, and we might even confess that thanksgiving dinner in comfy pajamas, while not a tradition we’d like to repeat, is going to be cozy and fun. We’ve had plenty of health challenges, but God continues to bless us. We have good jobs in a scary economy. We have a loving home. We have wonderful family and friends. All these things and more give glory to God.

We don’t really need a holiday to give thanksgiving, but it’s a good reminder that living as Christians  ”means living in thanksgiving: if God is the only One, everything we are and have comes from him” (CCC 224).

What are you thankful for?