Why do English speakers say “thank you” incessantly, and why are we obsessed with teaching our children such social niceties? These questions prompted acclaimed cultural historian Margaret Visser to meditate on the history and significance of giving thanks. Taking her cues from linguistics, sociobiology, anthropology, the classics, and the Bible, Visser investigates the way gratitude manifests itself, from tipping waiters in restaurants to standing in silence on Remembrance Day.
    Visser is careful to point out that gratitude comes out of a universal human ritual – the giving and receiving of gifts – and that such rituals are fundamental to the well-being of a society. She recounts numerous cultures where obligation and hierarchy permeate these actions (the Japanese are a favourite example, since their favourite turn of phrase is “I’m sorry”). Westerners, on the other hand, are not so bound by such obligations. So why are we still so thankful? Visser buries her lede: gratitude is a specifically Christian virtue, according to her – a point she doesn’t make until well into the book. As in her 2002 Massey Lectures, Beyond Fate, she argues that Christianity radically supplanted the classical world’s emphasis on honour, shame, and obligation with the ideals of love, freedom, and equality.
    The Gift of Thanks is both an enlightening and frustrating read. As befitting a former classics professor, the strongest parts of the book are the explorations of Greek mythology. These sections are far superior to the plodding transactional analysis of why we give gifts. The lack of insight into other religions is also troubling; Visser chooses only those belief systems that can act as a foil to her idea of gratitude. Even Judaism is relegated to the Old Testament, as if the religion had no new intellectual
developments post-Jesus!
    It’s too bad that Visser chose to make this book about “us” (she can’t decide if her readers are Anglo-Saxons or merely English-speakers) versus “them.” In doing so, she has highlighted what her book is missing. If gratitude, that celebrated Christian virtue, was only popularized in the 13th century, couldn’t the same ideas have evolved in other traditions?