Thanksgiving seems to be a natural response in most of us. Of course, we can take things for granted, and thanksgiving dribbles away to virtually nothing. And sometimes despair can overwhelm our sense of thanksgiving and gratitude for the good things in our lives and our future. And some are turned away from thanksgiving through the ideology of scientism - the ideology that universalizes the scientific method into a philosophy of everything - and whatever does not fit this universal method of knowing, well, it is deemed not to exist or doesn't matter. Under this ideology thanksgiving makes no sense. Because if we give thanks we are giving thanks to something/someone. And scientism can't accept this.
Thanksgiving, because it points to something/someone beyond ourselves and tells us that we are not the centre of the universe, is humbling. We are not the source of the goodness for which we give thanks. The sourceof the goodness lies beyond us. This humbling of human egoism is spiritually necessary, and thanksgiving is the easiest and least painful method of stepping off the stage of human hubris.
Thanksgiving also moves us out of ourselves, in response to the who or what we are acknowledging (no matter how inchoately). a residue of the Trinity.
Christianity believes that Jesus is the human face of this something/someone, and that we have a genuine and true encounter with this something/someone in Jesus and the Spirit. This someone/something is not ultimately a meaningless void upon which we apply a thin veneer of human meaning. It is not a random or arbitrary fortune, and is not utterly opaque to human scrutiny. The crucified-risen Jesus is a true revelation of this someone or something. Indeed, Jesus does more than just reveal the true nature of this someone or something, but gives us the opportunity to be included into its goodness in the deepest and most profound way.
