Ungrateful.

A modest proposal regarding giving thanks.

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I am aware from my prior experience writing on this subject that few things make people madder than what I am about to say, but here goes: We are grown-ass adults. If we don’t want to, it’s fine not to give thanks and it’s fine not to celebrate. Deal with it!

My younger daughter does not like Thanksgiving at all. At all. She doesn’t like any of the food, and she especially doesn’t like the enforced gratitude. Nevertheless, when my mother-in-law was alive, we’d all go out to her house for the holiday and it was nice enough, though the best part of the day was always picking a Marvel movie to watch together at night. Now that my mother-in-law is gone, we do things differently.

Let me tell you about the best Thanksgiving ever, the one I’ve dreamed of since I was three and we all went out for Chinese food because my grandfather had just died. In 2023, we packed up and went to Orlando, where the family spent the weekend at Universal. No stuffing, no pie, and the only turkey we encountered took the form of giant drumsticks. We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner and everybody ordered what they wanted. I had meatballs. It was amazing.

This year, while I miss my family acutely, I’ll be at an expat Friendsgiving featuring some decidedly European and Dominican flourishes. My older daughter will be doing something similar in London. And my younger daughter and spouse will be having a picnic on the living room floor and watching movies.

If gathering a big squad of relatives around the table for a Norman Rockwell moment fills you with delight, that’s great! I am happy for you. If it’s not your thing, that’s great too! (Do you ever think about how the old lady in that painting is probably the same age as Drew Barrymore? No? Just me?)

Holidays are hard, dude. For many of us, they bring up a lot of crazy stuff from our past. Or they put us in proximity with people we’d rather not be around. Or they make us feel like we’re not doing everything perfectly. We’re not festive enough on Christmas, celebratory enough on New Year’s, romantic enough on Valentine’s Day. (Don’t get me started on Mother’s Day.) And we’re not sufficently grateful on the fourth Thursday of November.

Gratitude is immensely important for physical and mental well-being. Keeping a gratitude journal can help lower your blood pressure. And gratitude can improve your sleep, reduce anxiety and depression, and it may even lengthen your lifespan. Taking those opportunities to experience and express to others our thanks is life-changing. I’m all for it. I’m also for tradition, and the science-backed evidence for how our rituals — in particular when tied to spirituality, however we want to define that — foster social connection and by extension better health. And I love the brilliant Annie Lamott’s distillation of the three essential prayers, “Help. Thanks. Wow.” because we cannot get through this life without assistance, gratitude, and wonder.

But what I, like my daughter, chafe against is when any of it becomes mandatory. “Just be grateful for what you’ve got” is a phrase that has easily been weaponized throughout history, a tool of intimidation and subjugation at the highest levels of power and the most intimate of relationships.

We live in a capitalist society that depends upon us desiring ever more stupid shit we don’t need in lieu of appreciating the smaller, simpler, beautiful things we already have. It’s no accident that our one mandated day of thanks per year has become a run-up to the ominously named, door-busting orgy of consumerism known as Black Friday. (Which, incidentally, seems to last a month.) Does that seem manipulative and cynical? It is.

I know that if I’m lucky enough to have anybody even read this, some will accuse me of being a buzzkill and yes, ungrateful. Knock yourself out, haters, glad to give you something to be mad about.

In a year that has on a global scale been a fucking horror show and on a personal level brought an awful lot of turbulence, insecurity, and massive, fall on my face flop-olas, I truly am incredibly thankful for so much, including, very high on my list, this place right here. By the time this post pubs, I will be in one of my favorite places in the world, with people I love deeply. You bet your ass I’ll be thankful. But insisting people “Give thanks” is, to me, like telling a woman to smile.

We spend our lives — especially if we’re female — people pleasing, making everybody else comfortable, doing what’s expected of us. Busting our asses to make a nice spread. Smiling and then crying in the bathroom. (Oh the bathroom cries I’ve racked up over the years.) And one of the great gifts of getting older, I promise, is being able to say, “You know what? Actually, fuck that, I’m out.” A beloved friend the other day told me how hyped she is not to send Christmas cards this year and I applaud her.

Yes, we still need to make compromises in life (Ask me about that SECOND degree in conflict resolution I’m working on!), but it’s totally cool to reassess and ask, “Does anybody here even like cranberries?” You know what I mean? It’s more than okay to decide that any traditions you don’t find fun are just broken systems in your life, and that you deserve an upgrade. Yes, you.

I will always be a fan of intentional and consistent gratitude practice, and the special touchstones throughout the year that bring us together. But the external rules can be just a starting point for us to build our own version of what suits us best. I don’t want anybody to tell me to be brave when I’m sick, and I super don’t want anybody to demand I be grateful for what I’ve got when I’m mourning what I’ve lost. I’ve been there, and it’s lonely and it hurts like hell. So if that’s you this year, I see you, and I will raise a high middle finger to it all in solidarity with you. Sound good? You don’t even have to thank me.