Why Thanksgiving?

How Adam Smith explains our national holiday of virtue

One winter evening, tired and annoyed after a stressful day, I grudgingly made a dinner of soup for our youngest three girls. The soup was, I can admit now, not good. It wasn’t horrible—I will fully admit to having produced my share of truly awful meals, and this wasn’t one of them—but it was, to put it gently, not a “repeat,” as my family says. The girls were polite enough not to openly wretch in front of me, but they did little more than poke at it. I was fuming. Finally, I demanded to know why they weren’t eating it. Never ask questions you already know the answer to. “I just don’t like it,” one finally admitted.

That clinched it. I got up, stomped to the front door, and marched down the street, leaving my coat behind so that the frigid air could help cool me off. Another hour on another meal, wasted. Another hour of my time sacrificed to make sure my kids don’t starve, all to produce another meal that they could not care less about. Don’t they realize how much I am giving up for them? Don’t they appreciate my efforts at all?

Finally, halfway up the hill, my mind cleared just enough for the thought to hit me: I should not serve my kids in order to obligate them. I should serve them because I love them, and then I should step back and let them respond as they will, without compulsion. True appreciation cannot be compelled. Gratitude must be free. I took a deep breath. Finally feeling in control, I returned home.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, one of the topics on everyone’s mind is gratitude. We have major holidays for religious events, historical events, historical figures, but there are no other holiday specifically for a virtue. This has always struck me as odd, since I have always considered gratitude as one of many possible virtues that someone should cultivate, and it was never clear why this particular one should get so much attention. Why is there no “Courage Day” or “Prudence Day?” (Can you imagine a worse holiday? No overeating, no dessert, early to bed, early to rise: Happy Prudence Day!)

Since I am on still on an Adam-Smith kick, I thought I’d think through Thanksgiving in light of what Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments has to say about gratitude—which is quite a lot, actually. One of Smith’s major goals in his book is to explain the source of our moral judgment—why it is that we deem some actions to be good, and some actions bad—and the feeling of gratitude plays a crucial role in that process. For Smith, we make moral judgments based on the moral feelings that certain actions invoke in us, and gratitude is one of the primary ones (resentment being the other). For “gratitude and resentment…are the sentiments which most immediately and directly prompt to reward and to punish. To us, therefore, he must appear to deserve reward, who appears to be the proper and approved object of gratitude; and he to deserve punishment, who appears to be that of resentment.”

That is, if we see an action—like someone returning a wallet full of cash to its proper owner—and feel gratitude, that is a signal that such an action is meritorious. This is true even if we are not the recipient of the good deed, because we can imagine ourselves into the situation. Smith says that gratitude is a “compounded sentiment,” comprising of a “direct sympathy” with the agent who did the good deed and an “indirect sympathy” with the recipient. We imagine how the agent must have felt, doing the good deed, and how the recipient must appreciate the agent’s charity.

Smith goes on to explain how gratitude-invoking actions—“beneficent actions,” or good deeds—are different from justice. “Beneficence,” Smith argues, “is always free, it cannot be extorted by force.” Because good actions depend on the agent actually wanting to do good, no one can be forced be charitable, and thus actions worthy of gratitude cannot be compelled. If making dinner for my kids is going to be worthy of their appreciation, I have to do it freely; otherwise, I cannot be entitled to any thanks. This type of thinking can be more pronounced in other cultures; I was surprised to discover, on a trip to China, that you don’t typically say “thank you” to service workers, like waiters, drivers, ticket collectors, for simply doing their job. As Don Draper put it, “That’s what the money’s for!”

Justice, on the other hand, is a virtue “not left to the freedom of our own wills, which may be extorted by force, and of which the violation exposes to resentment, and consequently to punishment.” Feelings of resentment, inspired by positive evils, require a remedy. Justice must be done, while charity only should be done.

For that reason, you also cannot be punished for not doing good deeds. While being uncharitable might invoke hatred, it cannot invoke resentment “because the mere want of beneficence tends to do no real positive evil.” If you found someone hungry and refused to feed them, you would be an awful person, but you would not be guilty of having caused their hunger, so you could not be compelled to provide for them. If, however, you had stolen their food in the first place, then you should be forced to repay that debt.

Justice is meted out through defined rules and expectations; good deeds come in creative, unique ways that the giver alone can decide on. In one of my favorite passages from Smith, he compares “the rules of justice” to “the rules of grammar,” as they are “precise, accurate, and indispensable,” while “the rules of the other virtues” are like what critics consider to be the “rules…of what is sublime and elegant in composition,” for they are “loose, vague, and indeterminate, and present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.” You can correct someone’s grammar like you can require them to correct a wong they have done. But you can no more tell someone how to be a good friend or good neighbor than you can tell them exactly what words they should string together to become a good writer.

So if good deeds must be free and undefined, what about acts of gratitude in response to good deeds? Is being grateful more like following the rules of justice and grammar, or is it more like charity and style? On the one hand, gratitude participates in the language of justice, for the duties “which gratitude recommends to us approach nearest to what is called a perfect and complete obligation….We talk of the debt of gratitude, not of charity, or generosity, nor even of friendship.” Both gratitude and justice are responses to the actions of other people—good deeds in the first case, and positive evils in the other.

And yet, unlike the debts of justice, you cannot force someone to repay a debt of gratitude, for like the good deeds that inspire it, gratitude is ultimately a beneficent virtue that can only be meaningful if it is freely offered. If people are unappreciative—like, say, a trio of ingrates receiving a free meal they have done nothing to deserve—their “want of gratitude…cannot be punished.” “To oblige him by force to perform what in gratitude he ought to perform,” Smith continues, “would, if possible, be still more improper than his neglecting to perform it.” As bad as ingratitude is, forcing someone to be grateful is even worse. When a parent requires their child to say “thank you” at the dinner table, no one assumes that the child is sharing any deeply felt appreciation—they are just learning the manners that will teach them how to respond appropriately when they are old enough to freely do so.

Still, that does not mean that gratitude is as freely given as other virtues. Gratitude comes with a stronger sense of expectations and obligations—which is why that parent would instill that habit of saying “thank you” in the first place. “Of all the virtues I have just now mentioned, gratitude is that, perhaps, of which the rules are the most precise, and admit of the fewest exceptions.” That someone should feel a debt of gratitude, that they are responsible to show appreciation in fairly prescribed ways, is more obvious than an expectation that they be brave or charitable.

But how to be grateful, what counts as showing thanks, will depend on the unique circumstances of each situation: “If your benefactor attended you in your sickness, ought you to attend him in his? or can you fulfil the obligation of gratitude, by making a return of a different kind? If you ought to attend him, how long ought you to attend him? The same time which he attended you, or longer, and how much longer? If your friend lent you money in your distress, ought you to lend him money in his? How much ought you to lend him? When ought you to lend him? Now, or to-morrow, or next month? And for how long a time?” If fulfilling a debt of gratitude were too precisely determined, it would snuff out the freedom that makes beneficent virtues lovely, reducing it to cold, calculated recompense. Saying thanks, like saying prayers, is prone to vain repetitions.

Compared to the other virtues, then, gratitude is in a peculiar position. It is, in a sense, obligatory, like justice, but it is also, or should be, freely given, like charity. Fulfilling it requires honoring certain social expectations, but there are not precise rules for what proper gratitude looks like.

So why does gratitude need its own holiday? Another of Smith’s most pressing questions, in all of his works, is how social cooperation is possible and should be encouraged. We cannot do without such cooperation, since “[a]ll the members of human society stand in need of each others assistance.” Now, readers of Wealth of Nations might assume that Smith is going to argue that such assistance can only, or should only, come from each individual pursuing their self-interest, which would leverage the power of the invisible hand to efficiently coordinate resources among everyone. But in fact, Smith argues the opposite: when that “necessary assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy.” In Smith’s ideal society, we are bound together not by self-interest but by the beneficent virtues, freely shared and reciprocated. Neighbors help out others in need; charity provides for the poor; gratitude returns the favor.

Still, Smith acknowledges that while these virtues are preferable, they are not necessary. For even if “among the different members of the society, there should be no mutual love and affection, the society, though less happy and agreeable, will not necessarily be dissolved.” As long as justice rectifies all wrongs that individuals do to one another, “[s]ociety may subsist among different men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility, without any mutual love or affection.” People don’t have to love each other to cooperate. I don’t need to love the farmer who grows my food, the mechanic who fixes my car, or the fellow driver who obeys the traffic laws: we can all live together by going about our self-centered ways, focused on what’s good for ourselves and our bottom line. Injuries and injustice, on the other hand, cannot be tolerated, for if they are rife throughout society, then all cooperation will crumble. “Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice…. It is the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which supports the building….Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice.”

It seems to me, then, that because gratitude hovers between justice and beneficence in Smith’s schema, gratitude represents a dividing line between a virtuous society that is flourishing and a callous society entirely dependent on justice to negotiate all social and commercial interactions. Beneficent virtues like friendship and charity are important, but because you cannot clearly delineate what being a good friend or being charitable might look like in all situations, it is difficult for society to establish norms around them that are widely shared.

Gratitude, on the other hand, comes with clearer norms and expectations that can be more directly encouraged and socially enforced. Everyone, everywhere can find something to be grateful for, so it comes more naturally for it to serve as the centerpiece of a national holiday. Plus, giving thanks is a virtue that improves recipient and agent alike. We are better for acknowledging how others have blessed us because we become more humble, and our benefactors are encouraged to continue being charitable because they are honored by our thanks.

Gratitude is thus a final barrier between a society devoid of virtue, relying entirely on justice, and one where virtue flourishes, keeping society more happy and agreeable. Gratitude can tap into our concern for justice while still satisfying our desire for virtue to be freely given. Since it is a virtue that exists in response to other virtues, practicing gratitude encourages and reinforces all the other virtues in turn, steering society away from becoming one dominated by justice towards one where beneficence flourishes. Giving gratitude its own holiday allows us to both celebrate that important role, and to pass that importance along to the next generation—which is much easier to do when the food is better. It turns out, my kids are actually very grateful human beings—as long as they are being served turkey, mashed potatoes, and apple pie.

Happy Thanksgiving.