It could be that Thanksgiving is the least appreciated of our major holidays. These days, it feels more like a small speed bump that we have to get over to race into the heart of the holiday season.

We know, of course, that some of you believe that the holiday season starts as soon as we’ve polished off the last of the Halloween candy. And we suspect that some of you are just about done with your holiday shopping and now are signing the last of your Christmas cards. (For the benefit of our younger readers: Christmas cards were a quaint custom in which we contacted friends and acquaintances once a year instead of posting daily updates on social media.)

If you truly are wrapping up the last of your holiday chores over the Thanksgiving weekend, more power to you. We respect you — perhaps we are a tinge envious — but we’re not in your camp.

One unfortunate side effect of our race to the holiday season is that it tends to give Thanksgiving Day itself short shrift. This may be in part because we tend to undervalue the importance of gratitude, the emotion that goes hand-in-hand with the holiday. The unique value of Thanksgiving is that it is a day specifically set aside for reflection about — and gratitude for — our blessings.

The calendar will turn from Thanksgiving to Black Friday soon enough, and we’ll get swept into the whirlwind of the holidays. Thanksgiving should be a day that is insulated, to the extent possible, from that whirlwind.

Nowadays, it doesn’t feel as if we have the time to be grateful, and that sense of time pressure intensifies during the holiday season, what with shopping and wrapping to do, attending parties and programs, and writing Christmas cards (or, in the alternative, posting season’s greetings on your Facebook page).

Abraham Lincoln also had plenty on his to-do list back in 1863, what with the Civil War raging and all, but he still found time in October of that year to issue a proclamation declaring a national day of thanksgiving. (Historians will know that George Washington also declared a national day for giving thanks in 1789, but before Lincoln’s proclamation, it was up to the states to declare their own days of gratitude. Lincoln was responding to a petition from a magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, who had lobbied for decades for a national day of thanksgiving.)

It is true that Lincoln, a busy man, delegated the writing of the proclamation to his secretary of state, William Seward. (And it required action from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to finally fix the date on the fourth Thursday in November.)

Lincoln did find the time to write editorials for newspapers arguing for the national day of thanksgiving: “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, the American people should take some time for gratitude,” he wrote.

Lincoln had reasons for gratitude: Three months before, the Union Army had claimed big victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Perhaps the tide finally had turned in the brutal Civil War.

Whatever the reason, Lincoln’s call for his fellow Americans to “take some time for gratitude” resonates today, and possibly more strongly than ever.

So here is our wish for you on Thanksgiving Day:

Before you start charting out shopping schedules, before you start clearing the space for the tree, before you turn on the TV to view the parades and football games, before you drag out the Christmas music from the dark nook where you’ve stashed it (really, that can wait until Friday), try this first:

Set your feet flat on the ground. Take a deep breath. Another one. And then another.

Then just take a minute or two to actually give thanks. Do it silently, if that works for you. If you’re a list-maker, jot down a few notes. Share your list if you like; it might start an interesting conversation over the dinner table.

Need a place to start? Consider offering thanks for what Seward called the “blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.” Or remember that “Thanks” is one of the writer Anne Lamott’s three essential prayers. (The other two? “Wow” and “Help.”)

And if you need further inspiration, consider these words from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night:” “I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.”