How to run a family gratitude jar at Thanksgiving
A Thanksgiving gratitude jar is one jar the whole table fills. Each person writes one thing they are thankful for and drops it in, and after the meal the notes are read aloud. You can do it with a jar from the cupboard, or on a phone, where guests add a note from a link.
Both ways are below, with questions to ask a table that has a six-year-old and a grandparent at it.
How do you run a paper gratitude jar?
A jar or a bowl, paper cut into strips, and pens. Any jar works: a jam jar, a pickle jar, a vase. Nothing to buy.
Print the strips (PDF, two pages): blank strips and a label for the jar, and eight questions on strips for a table that needs a nudge.
Put the jar out early
A week or two before Thanksgiving, where everyone passes it, with the strips and a pen beside it. By the day it is not empty, and the guests follow the family’s lead.
Write at the table
A strip and a pen at each place. The easiest moment is after the main course and before dessert: ten minutes while the table is slow. Or as people arrive, with a child handing out the strips. Signing is up to the writer.
Read it aloud
Pass the jar. Each person pulls one note and reads it out, whoever wrote it, until the jar is empty or dessert arrives. If the notes are unsigned, let the table guess.
Keep it for next year
Put the notes back, write the year on the lid, and open it next Thanksgiving before the new notes go in. After a few years the reading takes longer than the meal, and nobody minds.
How do guests add to the jar without the app?
Through a guest link. JoyJar is a gratitude jar app, and its shared jar takes notes from anyone with the link, from any phone, with no app and no account. The grandparent who could not travel is in the jar too.
Start a shared jar
In JoyJar, start a jar and name it. “The Family jar” will do.
Invite the people with the app
Up to five. They add to the jar for free.
Switch on the guest link
For everyone else. Send it round: a text, the family group chat, an email to the relatives abroad.
A guest adds a note
They open the link on any phone, write their name and a note, and drop it in. They see nothing else in the jar.
Pull a joy on the day
Read it out. Then another. The notes stay in the jar, with any photos, and are there next November.
The jar on your phone.
What a guest sees from the link.
30-day free trial, then a one-time payment of $4.99. No subscription.
The free month covers Thanksgiving. After it, the person who started the jar pays $4.99 once; the people invited to it pay nothing. No ads.
Android is coming later.
What do you write in a gratitude jar?
One thing, in a few words. A sentence is plenty, and a name is enough. Eight questions for a mixed table:
- What made you laugh this year?
- Who helped you when you had not asked?
- What did you learn to do this year?
- A meal you would eat again tomorrow.
- Something about the person on your left.
- A small thing from an ordinary day.
- Something that was hard, and turned out all right.
- Who do you wish were at the table?
More ideas for the jar
- One note per person. Each person writes a note about every other person at the table, so everyone goes home with a handful. Little House Living’s version, and the best one for a small table.
- A jar that runs to New Year. Keep the jar out after Thanksgiving and read it on New Year’s Eve.
- A countdown jar. A question in the jar for each day of November, pulled out at breakfast.
- A jar at work or at school. The same jar on the staff-room table or the classroom shelf, read out on the last day before the break.
Questions
Do guests need the app to add to the jar?
No. A shared jar in JoyJar has a guest link, a web page at joyjar.app. A guest opens it on any phone, writes a name and a note, and it drops into the jar. No app and no account.
What does JoyJar cost?
30-day free trial, then a one-time payment of $4.99. No subscription. The free month covers Thanksgiving. The person who started the jar pays; the people invited to it pay nothing.
Can we keep the notes for next year?
Yes. On paper, put the notes back in the jar, write the year on the lid, and open it next Thanksgiving before the new notes go in. In JoyJar the notes stay in the jar, with any photos, and can be pulled out any day of the year.
Either way, on paper or on a phone, the jar does the same thing: it gets everyone at the table to say one true thing, and it keeps it.
Written by Vimla Gulabani, who makes JoyJar. This page was last updated on 1 November 2026.