How Halloween Taught Me a Lesson in Gratitude
I love opening the door to eager Halloween faces, hearing children shout, “Trick or treat!” and exclaiming my wonder at their clever costumes. But last night, October 31, I was not home. Instead, I spent the evening with my family, taking my grandchildren trick-or-treating in their neighborhood, which is about five miles from my house. Yet I wanted to participate in the holiday in my own neighborhood. Thus, I left a large bowl of candy on my front porch, with a sign that said, “Take two treats… One for you and one to share!”
As I accompanied my grandchildren in their trip through their neighborhood, I was happy to hear them say “Thank you!” to their neighbors as they collected their treats.
All that sugar may not be good for them, but gratitude is a healthy habit for them to cultivate.
Why is it important?
Melissa Madeson (2025) reports on the neuroscience of gratitude, explaining that being thankful is correlated with resilience, lower stress levels, lower anxiety, better physical health, more sleep, greater empathy, and less depression.
Is there anything a good “thank you” won’t fix? I’m sure my grandchildren don’t realize its importance yet, and are simply following through on learning to be good people as taught by their parents. But how can we all reap these benefits?
Several studies have indicated that effective gratitude habits include journaling, writing thank you notes or letters, making lists of your blessings, and verbalizing thanks to others on a regular basis (Dinz, et. al, 2023).
Uh-oh.
I’ve never been good at journaling. I’ve got a drawer full of half-filled notebooks that I started with great intentions but eventually got tired of trying to remember to do it.
I go to bed at night, fully intending to count all the blessings of my life (and there are many), but I’m so tired I fall asleep before I can make a good list.
Thus, beyond saying “thank you” to people who help me with everyday things and writing thank you notes for gifts, I find these recommended gratitude habits easy to start and difficult to continue. Even though I consider myself a thankful person, I could never really connect with those gratitude practices that are touted in psychological research literature.
And, as it turns out, there’s research that says gratitude journaling and making thankful lists are not helpful practices if you’re not sincere about embracing them (Daughterty, 2023). (And I’m pretty sure falling asleep while attempting them is not a sincere embracing of them.)
What is helpful?
In my search for alternatives to making lists, I was delighted to find out about gratitude narratives. Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology, explains that a gratitude narrative is a story about a time when someone expressed their thanks to me, or a time when I witnessed someone expressing gratitude to someone else.
His research shows that recalling such stories is much more powerful than writing a list or journaling, and is more effective for helping me feel more authentically thankful. He also determined that the effects of gratitude come from receiving thanks, not giving thanks. So, while it’s important for me to say thank you to others, my “feel good” moments are maximized when I remember how I felt when someone said “thank you” to me. It helps if I recall the premise of the story, its emotional details, and the feelings that it invokes.
Rather than forcing myself to write a journal entry or make a list, I can linger on a story – recalling a time when someone was grateful for me, or a time when I witnessed the kindness of others. Such thoughts can help me feel calm and --- well, just plain good.
So, my Halloween story continues:
Because I have a security camera on the front door, and I get notifications on my phone anytime someone walks up the front steps, I was getting heavily “dinged” throughout the Halloween evening. Most of the time, I ignored the notifications, but one of them intrigued me. On my doorbell video, I watched a small group of children dressed in a variety of costumes as they carefully chose two pieces of candy from the bowl that I’d left on the porch. They consulted with each other on what they were going to take, and I could even hear them discuss who they would share their candy with.
Then, as everyone got ready to leave, they faced the front door, and shouted, “THANK YOU!”
These kids were shouting thank you to someone who wasn’t even there. I’d like to go find them and hug them. And hug their parents, too.
I’ll keep this “gratitude narrative” in mind as November marches on. The grief of losing my husband seven years ago makes the upcoming holiday season complicated. But gratitude does, indeed, feel good. Especially when I don’t have to make a list.
References
Daugherty, A. (2023, Nov. 19). When ‘gratitude’ goes wrong. Available from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/healing-stress-from-the-inside-out/202311/when-gratitude-goes-wrong
Dinz, G., Korkes, L., Tristao, L., Pelegrini, R., Bellodi, P., & Bernardo, W. (2023). The effects of gratitude interventions: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Available from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10393216/
Madeson, M. (2025, Sept. 15). The neuroscience of gratitude and its effects on the brain. Available from https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/
