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I've always loved Thanksgiving. In my view, it's the perfect pressure-free holiday — blessed with no presents, a traditional meal that's a snap to prepare and unabashed burbling about what we're truly thankful for. Or, as one of my psycho-babbling friends puts it: "The attitude is gratitude."

In my darker moments, I must confess, I sometimes change this to "the platitude is gratitude." Except here's the thing: It turns out that gratitude may be like leafy greens — essential to our well-being.

Recent research shows that the more genuinely grateful we are for the things we actually have in our lives (as opposed to what we don't have that we secretly think we're entitled to), the happier we are and the better our lives feel.

I've known this in an offhand way for years and have often — on birthdays and sometimes during a crisis — made a list of the things I am most grateful for at that moment. Still, I was a little alarmed to discover that my innocent exercise is considered a "gratitude intervention." And that gratitude itself is now a science.

Gratitude interventions — a term used by American researchers Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough in their book The Psychology of Gratitude — can mean something as simple as listing three things you're most grateful for every night before you go to sleep to keeping a weekly gratitude journal.

Martin Seligman, the king of positive psychology, also suggests "the gratitude visit" — which involves writing a testimonial to someone in your past you never properly thanked, calling him to say you have a "surprise" for him, and then showing up on his doorstep to read your tribute. Not only does this make everyone "weep" when it happens, he has reported, but it "makes people lastingly less depressed and happier."

This might not work for a high-end urban paranoid like me. If someone from my past said he was coming by to "surprise" me, I would probably double-lock my doors.

But then the reframing of a very old emotion — gratitude — into a new science is consonant with an era in which "happiness" and "satisfaction" have been commodified and turned into books (complete with instructions).

Yet too much emphasis on gratitude as a series of set gestures can seem scripted from a mushy card. It also has a whiff of religiosity — all major religions stress gratitude (perhaps thankful people are less likely to rebel against their precepts).

And we all know grumps and misanthropes who have never expressed a grateful word in their lives, but who nonetheless seem to live way better than the rest of us.

On the other hand, many people who have been seriously ill describe the transformational force of gratitude in their recovery. "I'm a gratitude junkie now," says a friend who survived several operations for melanoma. Her appreciation for the way her loved ones rallied didn't cure her, but it kept her hopeful and optimistic as she recovered.

Sarah Ban Breathnach knows all about gratitude. In fact, the author of Simple Abundance — which encouraged women, especially, to stop their frenetic, guilt-infused lives and on a daily basis smell the roses, iron their sheets with lavender or enjoy fresh tomatoes (in other words, to celebrate the little pleasures in life) — has been described as the "founder of the gratitude industry."

I reached her in England, where she moved after what she calls her "shocking" literary success — initially rejected by publishers, her book became one of the top 10 bestsellers of the 1990s. She continues to offer workshops, although she views gratitude less as an industry and more as "an awareness movement."

The woman who was gently mocked as "Martha Stewart on Prozac" wrote her first book after recovering from injuries she suffered when a ceiling tile fell on her head.

For her, becoming grateful was a personal need: "I never complained to the rest of the world, but I was constantly whining and complaining inside my heart, and I wanted to stop it."

Ms. Ban Breathnach still believes the biggest obstacle to gratitude is "stubbornly thinking you're entitled to more." And, while her website features treacly music, a list of spinoffs and the admonition that if you don't keep a gratitude journal, a life of gratitude just won't work for you, she maintains that her theories have now been authenticated by formal study.

Indeed, Profs. Emmons and McCullough — who teach at the University of California and the University of Miami, respectively — found that people who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis "exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events."

Not surprisingly, they were also more likely to have "made progress toward important personal goals." And if you up the gratitude ante to a daily routine, the researchers say, you could end up with higher levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy.

Like Ms. Ban Breathnach, however, these researchers note that there was no difference in levels of unpleasant emotions reported. In other words, gratitude isn't a smiley-face moment — more a sober acknowledgment of the good things alongside the more difficult.

Which could explain the payoffs Profs. Emmons and McCullough reported even in a sample of adults with neuromuscular disease. A 21-day gratitude intervention resulted in more "high-energy positive moods, a greater sense of feeling connected to others, more optimistic ratings of one's life and better sleep duration and sleep quality."

This makes me wonder if not counting your blessings is actually detrimental to your health. So yes, make mine turkey — with a heaping side of gratitude. (Could this be the "mashed potato intervention?")

And for those who still find it hard to be grateful, you might consider what French novelist Colette famously said, with just a soupçon of regret: "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."

Judith Timson is a columnist based in Toronto.