Thanksgiving is a time to recognize and be thankful for all that is good in our lives, which includes being thankful for our cars. During the year, it’s easy to take our many blessings for granted. Espresso machines that give us delicious coffee at the press of a button. Air conditioners that cool the air in our homes in summer and heat them in winter. And of course, the cars we depend on daily, to take us where we want to go.

Thanksgiving is a time to stop and ponder and appreciate. But how many of us are thankful for our cars? We think of our cars as a necessary purchase, not always appreciating the miracle of wheels and motors and automatic transmission.

Being Thankful for Our Cars

Most of us spend a lot of time in our cars. Not quite half of us, 42%, name our cars, and assign them a gender. We use our cars to drop our kids off at daycare and school every morning. Our cars get us to work and back again. They take us to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, or alternatively, to the grocery store to purchase turkey and the fixings we need to host our families at home. How often do we stop and express that we recognize the convenience of our cars—how often do we say out loud that we are thankful for our cars?

Our daily routine depends on cars, whether new or used, gas-dependent or electric, Lyft or Uber or taxi-cabs. Without them we’d be lost. So this Thanksgiving, let’s take a moment to appreciate the gift of the automobile.

Three reasons to be thankful for our cars:

1. Convenience: Our cars take us long distances that we could never traverse by foot. Cars are fast when we need to get to the office in a hurry. Our vehicles have cup-holders so we can caffeinate on the way to work, and cars have space for our groceries so we can whisk them away to our homes. We can cool and heat our cars or even play music by pressing this or that button. When it rains, we have windshield wipers to clear away the drops, and defoggers to help us remove the condensation on our windows that make it hard to see. There are even snow tires to help us drive in ice and snow. Being thankful for our cars means appreciation for the fact that we can come and go as we please, just by getting behind the wheel.
2. Independence: If you own a car, you never have to depend on others to help you get where you need to go. For people with mobility issues in particular, having a car means not having to ask for help, and having speed to carry one where they need to go, even when one’s legs don’t work as they should. The wheels do the job that the legs and feet cannot. Whether or not one has a disability, it’s possible to appreciate the way our cars grant us the gift of independence.
3. Freedom: Being thankful for our cars means recognizing the gift of summer road trips, of taking the day off and driving to the beach where we are free to kick off our shoes and just hang out. Our cars give us the freedom to travel to stunning national parks or beloved grandparents in a different city. With wheels under our feet, we are free to go anyplace we want, traveling from place to place without even breaking a sweat.

All of these reasons and more are reason enough to be grateful for our cars. So as you look around you at the Thanksgiving table, take stock: the golden-brown turkey on its platter didn’t fly there, and the cranberry sauce did not fall from the sky. Perhaps guests taking part in your holiday celebration flew into town in an airplane. Nonetheless, they likely got from the airport to your home with the help of a car.

This Thanksgiving we have many reasons to be thankful. Let’s not forget to be thankful for our cars.