Just Another Day To Give Thanks
Yes, today is a special day in the US. It is our national day of thanksgiving. Nothing wrong with that. In fact there's a lot good about it. Well, today's quote from Thinkexist.com Quotations got the change of thinking going:

Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.
- Henry Van Dyke. American short-story Writer, Poet and Essayist, 1852-1933

Which fit in with what I found out over at Beliefnet something that I had known intuitively and anecdotally: being grateful is good for you. For example:

People who describe themselves as feeling grateful to others and either to God or to creation in general tend to have higher vitality and more optimism, suffer less stress, and experience fewer episodes of clinical depression than the population as a whole. These results hold even when researchers factor out such things as age, health, and income, equalizing for the fact that the young, the well-to-do, or the hale and hearty might have "more to be grateful for."

Grateful people are more spiritually aware and more likely to appreciate the interconnectedness of all life, regardless of whether they belong to specific religions.

In short, it is more than something to do as a modern interpretation of a "harvest festival." Gratitude, thanksgiving, is to be a way of life that can be good for you.

And, it should go without saying, it will also be good for everyone around you.

One this Thanksgiving, 2005, then, may we all learn a little more about what each of us can be grateful for and then take that into the next 364 days until we do it all again next year.

I thank the Lord for what, for what He’s done in us
I thank the Lord for His love
I thank the Lord for what He’s gonna do in us
From the Heavens above
I thank the Lord for the smile that He’s put on my face
I thank the Lord for His grace
I thank the Lord for the joy that He has given to me
‘Cuz now I know that I am really set free

CHORUS:
Everybody Everybody
Everybody praise the Lord
Everybody Everybody
Everybody praise the Lord
--Lincoln Brewster