That Thanksgiving has become an almost forgotten holiday in our society is a testament to how degraded weโve become in the West.
Biblical thanksgiving is so much more than a passive gratefulness for what youโve been given by God. Itโs a proactive, active engagement with His truth in the real world.
Manna for the soul.
Of all the traits you should have as a Christian, thanksgiving must reside at the top of the list, and if it doesnโt, that explains why youโre miserable despite being a child of the eternal Creator.
Over the next few weeks, you and I are going to explore what thanksgiving really means, how it separates the Christian from the rest of culture, why the world needs much much much more of it, and how you can become a cheerful follower of God Most High.
Thanksgiving is so powerful that even when unbelievers put it into action, their lives transform for the better in unimaginable ways.
Today, weโll do a dive into the mental impacts of thankfulness, what the Bible considers real thanksgiving, and how an important church father described the incredible transformative power of honest gratitude.
The Mental Impacts of Thanksgiving
Everyone stresses positive thinking so much these days, itโs become almost cliche. But the obvious truth remains: The more positive and thankful you are, the better you are emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. Especially when you pair your positive and thankful thoughts with meaningful action toward a specific goal.
5 recent studies from Springer, PNAS, Pubmed, Science Direct which Iโll link at the end of this section all conclude that positivity and thankfulness across the board, no matter what worldview you have, results in these benefits:
Higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions (more happiness, less sadness and anger)
Improvements in life satisfaction and optimism (contentment)
Better relationship quality and pro-social behavior (you actually want to talk to people)
Better sleep, exercise routines, blood pressure, and so on (improved physique)
By contrast, negative thoughts lead to bitterness, thoughts of murder or suicide, abandonment of personal hygiene and fitness, and tangible laziness. Which in turn leads to poverty, psychosis, and isolation. Also known as utter misery.
But thanksgiving and positive thinking must go beyond mere feeling. An important caveat.
Those who take tangible action to bring about their positive beliefs and manifest gratitude also bring tangible change for the better to society at large.
No faith system has done so better than Christianity. Out of thankfulness understood to be united to the grace of God via the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ Jesus (which weโll get to more in the next section), Christians held all humans to have universal innate value as made in the image of God and established everlasting institutions taken for granted today, like hospitals and orphanages (care for the orphan, widow, poor, and leper) and Western concepts like that of human rights, the abolition of the slave trade (yes, atheists, Christians did that), the rule of law, and voluntary associations (churches, universities, charities, clubs, fraternal orders, civic groups, trades, professional societies, advocacy, volunteer fire companies and schools).
Alexis de Tocqueville, not a friend to Christianity at all (a big skeptic of the French Revolution), noted these positive establishments in his writings in 18th-century France, and attributed them specifically to Protestant Christianity in America. Historians have also long noted churches and missions as the first voluntary associations.
Such institutions are integral to a free society because they prevent the populace from being enslaved to and compelled by the State. Able to worship their God or gods however they wish. Something socialists/communists and radical Islamist hate, since they want to eliminate all other belief systems but their own.
All the above was made possible because of what the Bible considers real thanksgivingโฆ
Sources:
Portocarrero, Gonzalez & Ekema-Agbaw (2020) โ A meta-analytic review of the relationship between dispositional gratitude and well-being
Personality and Individual Differences
sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886920302907
Largest and cleanest summary of how trait gratitude relates to well-being (158 samples, N โ 100,000).Emmons & McCullough (2003) โ Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12585811
The foundational experimental study that launched modern gratitude-intervention research.The 2025 PNAS cross-cultural meta-analysis
A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of gratitude interventions on well-being across cultures
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2425193122
Most comprehensive recent synthesis (145 studies, 28 countries).Cregg & Cheavens (2021) โ Gratitude interventions: Effective self-help? A meta-analysis of the impact on symptoms of depression and anxiety
Journal of Happiness Studies
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-020-00236-6
Best focused analysis of effects on depression and anxiety symptoms, including important caveats about effect size and control conditions.The 2026 PNAS multinational megastudy
A multinational megastudy of the effects of gratitude practices on subjective well-being
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2537789123
Largest experimental test to date (34 countries, N โ 10,700), providing the most current and culturally diverse experimental evidence.
Real Thanksgiving in the Bible
For the Ancient Israelites and the apostles, thanksgiving is both a feeling of gratefulness and an active acknowledgement of the truth. Specifically the truth of your own sinfulness and Godโs position as the only One who redeems you.
The Hebrew uses 2 words:
Yadah: Comes from the root for hand and means to extend, throw, cast. When used in reference to the human mind, it means to acknowledge openly or declare something factual. Like Godโs character and deeds or your sin. A confession.
Todah: We get this term from yadah, and it means โthanksgiving.โ Itโs linked to the thank offering in the Hebrew Law (see Leviticus 7), which is an offering the community was expected to make after an act of divine deliverance. Every member would participate and celebrate with not only a sacrifice but a party of with choirs, song, and dance.
These two words become even more incredible once you see the words used to translate them in the New Testament:
Eucharisteo: Yes, the same word from which we get Eucharist. An active verb that means โgive good graceโ or โgive good gift.โ Jesus used the word over many meals, including of course the Last Supper in the upper loft with the disciples. There he broke bread and poured the wine which he equated to his own body and blood as the final sacrifice, the ultimate divine deliverance from sin and death.
Eucharistia: The noun for the previous active verb. โGood graceโ/โgood gift.โ
Charis: โGrace.โ The root theme the other two words are based on. Namely, the grace of God through the willing sacrifice of Christ Jesus.
Thanksgiving means far more than a mere โThank you.โ Belief and acceptance of the Redeemer and communal recognition of His reign and power to save undergird the entire prospect and drive the saved into outward action on behalf of the Giver. Giving begets giving in cheerful reciprocity.
You die to yourself and live for Christ because He died for you.
Gratitude always works this way. Built into us by the Designer. And I just lived through a perfect illustration a couple days ago.
My birthday was Monday 11/9. Had to work it, but the next evening 11/10 my wife took me out to see the Christian rock band Skillet in concert near our home.
We get there and find out another band I loved in high school was also there that night. I was ecstatic. So much I jumped and wouldnโt shut up around the merch table, which I think embarrassed my wife a little. I mean, it was a whole celebration. Probably wouldโve danced if I wasnโt afraid of knocking a couple stranger off the crowded balcony.
In the moment, though, once the excitement waned, all I could think was how precious my wife was for giving me something she and I didnโt know I needed. She didnโt even know that band was going to be there. Skillet was enough, but the added bonus made the value even greater, and I now want to do something special for her.
Magnify that scenario infinite times with Christ. He gave us what we didnโt know we needed. Permanent rescue from sin and death by suffering the most excruciating pain and humiliation imaginable, dying, and then busting open the tomb three days later.
Itโs no coincidence Christ chose bread and wine to represent His body and blood. They tie to the manna in the desert that God fed the Israelites and to the peace offering shared by Abraham and Melchizedek in Genesis. To eat it is to partake of a meal from the Great High Priest for your desperate soul, one that remembers Godโs own provision and sacrifice and shows your willingness to become a part of His everlasting kingdom.
The earliest churches saw this clearly about thanksgiving. In the Didache, a 1st-century instruction manual for new believers, 2 prayers are said over the cup and the bread:
(1) โWe thank you, our Father, for the holy vine of David your servant, which you made known to us through Jesus your servant; to you be glory forever.โ
(2) โWe thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you made known to us through Jesus your servant...As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was gathered together and became one, so let your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.โ
Ingratitude was considered a serious fault because it didnโt mirror the life of the Savior and didnโt recognize the ongoing gifts from the Father.
No one explains Christian thanksgiving better than the legendary defender of the faith, Tertullian...
This has been a preview of our weekly paid article for Allegiant Faith VIPs. Become a paid subscriber to get access to the full article and more:
Courageous Chrisโs โ30-Day Evangelist: How to Share, Defend, and Live Your Christian Faith in a Secular World.โ
An eBook copy of Courageous Chrisโs The Atheist Conversion Manual: 17 Cases that Destroy Secular Religion, Prove God, and Show You the Way to Eternal Life.
Copies of all future published works.
Access to our full archive of articles
An exclusive subscriber chat
2 articles every week
Your support means the world to us and helps us continue to grow online.
Click below and upgrade!
