Like most Europeans I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays. Ironic, since they export everything else, and also because it’s one of the few things about their culture that is both genuinely theirs and genuinely genuine.

And yet, this year – this strange, divisive, scary year – I feel a need to give thanks more than I usually do. Perhaps because so many of the things we normally take for granted have been taken away from us, such as: will I be able to see my family? Will everyone I know be alive at the end of the year? Will I have a job for long? Will democracy prevail?

So. I am thankful. For so many things. For the fact that everyone I know has survived Covid so far, in spite of several friends having had scary experiences.

I am thankful for my kids, and their resilience – they managed the transition to distance schooling as well as can be expected, and I got a chance to spend more time with them (something for which they may or may not be thankful), teaching them and learning from them.

I am thankful I have got a job – I can’t imagine the stress experienced by people who were laid off in the middle of this crisis! – and that I live in a country with a functioning healthcare system.

I am thankful for my friends, old and new, who – although they are scattered across the world in places like Australia, Texas, Hungary, Wales and Massachusetts – have felt closer to me than ever.

I am thankful for the fact that Covid has helped improve my relationship to the children’s mother a little – forced to isolate from the world for weeks and months we had little choice but to socialize with one another, and it turned out to be ok.

I am thankful for having been able to see my extended family in person at least a couple of weeks this summer, and for the technology that enables me to see them on screen for the rest of the time.

I am thankful for Biden winning the US elections; that decency prevailed (just!) in a country I grew up thinking was good through and through, which in reality turned out to mostly be – much like their Thanksgiving holiday – about selfish overconsumption at the expense of others.

And finally I’m grateful for the fact that Covid will hopefully be defeated before long – would that the pandemic experience will bring about the change that is needed in this world! At least then all the pain and suffering hasn’t been for nothing.