I have stood in too many checkout lines the weekend after Thanksgiving Day, watching carts overflow while our better angels are left in the car in the parking lot. Every year, the same thought occurs to me: Thanksgiving is supposed to be a quiet pause in America’s noisy calendar, a day for gratitude — for naming what is enough. Yet every year, that pause lasts about eight hours. By midnight, the same hands that passed the stuffing are refreshing shopping carts for Black Friday deals. Gratitude barely has time to digest before consumption takes over.

Then, five days later, comes GivingTuesday, noble in spirit but often overshadowed by the sale stampede. By the time we ask people to pivot from discounts to donations, from Cyber Monday to sacred purpose, attention and credit limits are already maxed out. Most households have already made the big decisions with their wallets.

We need to flip the sequence. What if the Tuesday before Thanksgiving became the national day of giving, when gratitude is still fresh and wallets are still full?

I am a rabbi at a nonprofit organization and a spiritual teacher who speaks with people every day about living generously. If I could snap my fingers to make this cultural calendar change, I would move GivingTuesday to a week from today, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and make it a civic ritual of gratitude and philanthropy instead of a post-shopping frenzy add-on.

Why does this matter? Because timing is not cosmetic: it shapes attitudes, budgets and behavior.

Holiday shopping now dominates the national headspace in late November, if not even before. The National Retail Federation projects U.S. holiday sales (so sales for November through December 2025) will exceed the trillion-dollar mark. Cyber Monday alone generated $13.3 billion in online sales in 2024; asking people after that spike in spending to recalibrate for charity is a behavioral uphill battle.

In Jewish ethical language, hakarat hatov (recognizing the good, i.e. giving thanks) and tzedakah (charity) belong together. We name our blessings, and then we act on them. You don’t need to be Jewish to practice that order. Every tradition, and the best of secular civic life, knows this rhythm: gratitude first, generosity next. 

Behavioral science supports these ideas. Studies consistently show that gratitude increases prosocial behavior, even when helping comes at a personal cost. And when people decide to give now but implement their donation later, donations can increase significantly; one experiment found that one-time donations rose by about 50% when implemented a week after the decision. 

Translation: We must invite people to make a gift decision on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, when they’re still primed for giving spirit of the season but it’s before the retail spike — and capture intention before budgets are drained.

Spiritual stewardship means that we can help people and households plan for gifts before incurring big-ticket expenses. Creating structural spiritual interventions that help them and others. And for us in nonprofits, we must be clearer with our messaging without competing with Black Friday/Cyber Monday copywriting, which will give us more room for storytelling and community partnerships.

You may say, “It’s too late. GivingTuesday is a brand.” Well, all brands evolve. GivingTuesday started in 2012. If our mission is generous action, then aligning with gratitude and planning makes the brand stronger, not weaker.

Some might say that the calendar is crowded and logistics might be messy — but that’s precisely the point. The current placement is the mess. Moving up one week simplifies operations: faith communities can discuss generosity a weekend earlier, nonprofits can launch coordinated messages earlier. The logistics do not get harder; they get earlier.

As the rabbi of Beit Tshuvha, a Jewish residential recovery community and congregation, who works with people with addiction of all kinds seeking a life of meaning, I see this at work every day. In our community, when we teach gratitude as a daily spiritual drill — naming three gifts before bed, for example — giving follows naturally. People in recovery know that gratitude reopens the hand that fear had clenched. When we invite giving before the feast, people come to the table already thinking about who else needs to eat. 

If you’re a clergy member or lay leader, weave an ask into your preholiday service or message. If you are a nonprofit, frame a short, bold campaign: “GratitudeTuesday: Give First.” If you are a retailer or employer, join the civic reset: match staff gifts that day and tell your customers why.

Gratitude should not be an emoji we send after the cart clears; it should be the foundation we stand on before we make a purchase. Move the day, and we move the culture — one week, and a world of difference.

Let us give first. Then feast and spend.

Rabbi Igael “Iggy” Gurin-Malous is the rabbi at Beit Tshuvah, a Jewish residential recovery community and congregation in Los Angeles, and a spiritual teacher. He also serves as the vice board chair and as faculty at the Academy of Jewish Religion, Los Angeles.