Gratitude, Roots, and the Hands That Grow Our Food

This time of year always brings me back to gratitude - not the shiny, picture-perfect kind we often see attached to Thanksgiving, but the quiet kind.
The warmth of a shared meal, the scent of woodsmoke, the laughter that fills a kitchen, and the long exhale that comes with slowing down.

But before we call it Thanksgiving, it feels important to remember what existed long before the holiday itself.
Here on the Pacific Northwest Coast - on the unceded lands of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Coast Salish, and Kwakwaka’wakw Peoples - gratitude has always been a way of life.

For generations, communities have gathered to honor reciprocity: giving back as much as you take, caring for what sustains you, and sharing abundance through ceremonies like the First Salmon Feast and the Potlatch. These were not moments of consumption, but of connection - expressions of deep respect for the land, the water, and all living things.

The First Salmon Feast, still practiced today in many coastal Nations, celebrates the return of the salmon - a relative and life-giver - and marks the beginning of the fishing season. The first catch is honored, shared, and returned to the water, symbolizing gratitude and the renewal of relationship between people and the natural world.

The Potlatch, a ceremonial gathering central to coastal Indigenous life, was an act of giving and governance — where names, stories, marriages, and titles were witnessed and wealth was shared. When colonial law banned the potlatch in 1885, the intent was not just to end a ceremony, but to erase an entire system of generosity, gratitude, and community.
Yet those values endured quietly through generations, until the ban was finally lifted in 1951, allowing ceremonies to once again take place openly.

By contrast, the version of Thanksgiving many of us grew up with became an official national holiday much later — in 1879, the Canadian government declared a “Day of General Thanksgiving,” and in 1957, Parliament fixed it to the second Monday of October.
Two very different relationships to gratitude: one imposed by colonial law, the other deeply embedded in place and community for millennia.

And that’s what I hold close this weekend - not the holiday itself, but the spirit of thanks that has always existed here.

At The Hobbyist, everything we make begins from that same place of appreciation — for the plants that lend their oils, the farmers and foragers who bring them to life, and the land that sustains us all.
Each bar of soap, each candle, each small-batch creation is our own way of saying thank you — for beauty, for sustenance, for connection.

So while I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional sense, I do celebrate abundance - the kind that comes from the earth, from hard work, and from community.

Here’s to the hands that grow our food, the people who gather around our tables, and the countless quiet moments that remind us how rich life already is.

Happy Thanksgiving — in the truest sense of the word: giving thanks. 🌿