By Angela Diana, Alliance Intern from Cornell University ‘28
For most of my life, I have experienced very intense seasonal depression. I think it’s pretty common. As winter comes, I feel that exhaustion that comes with the darkness. I isolate myself simply because I don’t have the energy to get up and out of the house, and that only makes it worse.
It’s only in recent years that I’ve started to notice this trend, and be proactive about fighting the seasonal slump. This is part of why I’m so interested in thanksgiving.
Our holiday of Thanksgiving has come under some criticism, like Columbus Day, for having its roots in colonialism. Enjoying the holiday requires, on some level, toning down the violence of early American conquest into an appropriate children’s story. And for those who are estranged from or not able to get to their family or who have experienced a recent loss, having had the precedent of seeing each other can make you very sad.
Yet unlike Columbus Day, a similarly colonial holiday that we have since fully given up on, Thanksgiving has persevered — because it is so much more than that. There is a very clear reason behind the kinds of holidays we have in winter: they are uplifting.
Seeing family, eating food and having a party are designed specifically for the kind of seasonal depression that I and so many people experience in the cold months. And of course, central to the holiday is the expression of gratitude.
I used to assume that the expression of gratitude itself — telling others you appreciate them — helps them be happy and creates bonding. Certainly, there is some merit in simply telling yourself to be happy until it works.
But beyond that, I have recently come to believe that the specific things we mention — food, health, family, life — are particularly uplifting for the fact that they are things we always have, that are so ingrained in our lives.
For me, thanksgiving allows me to enter in to a space of gratitude. But how can I find that during winter? Meditation also gives me that amazing experience. Meditation is essentially the practice of feeling things we normally take for granted — the carpet under your feet, the air you’re breathing, and the little noises in the environment. Meditation isn’t quite as much of a trend as it was ten years ago, but there’s a good reason it was popular.
In the summer, when I am sad, I go outside and sit in the sun. There is nothing more uplifting to me than the experience of feeling the warmth on your face and letting it spread down through your body, knowing that you are here in the world.
It is hard to find something similar in winter that makes me feel present in myself. I am inside too much to feel that kind of strong kinship with nature.
To me, gratitude is a close second for sunlight. Thanksgiving itself is an annual ritual of forcing myself to think about and appreciate things I normally take for granted. It is the same internal reflection we practice in meditation.
I have heard a lot about how gratitude is good for you and how it feels good. Generally, we seem to be content with the concept that it just feels good and leave it at that. I don’t think that’s enough.
We need to talk more about how gratitude specifically combats the negative feelings that come from winter. Being cold and inside all the time creates not only sadness, but a specific kind of disconnection from the environment. Acknowledging the things we like in our lives is a good way to reinforce who we are and, ultimately, restore that sense of belonging to the world.