It is, of course, a well-documented fact that the epicenter of unhappiness is the Maine Mall on the day after Thanksgiving. Just ask any husband who has been there.

The anxiety is written on the faces of shoppers desperately competing for parking spaces in the mall’s crowded lot. The aching feet, knees and backs can be seen in the grimaces of shoppers waiting in long lines to take advantage of sale prices.

It’s the kickoff of what has unfortunately become a tense season of too many parties and too much gift-buying crammed into about 30 days, all occasionally interrupted by a paralyzing ice or snow event.

But today represents the lull before the storm, the day set aside to be thankful for our personal bounty.

Thankfulness is, of course, related to happiness. We are thankful for the things that bring us satisfaction or pleasure.

But almost anything can be spun in a thankful way. For instance, “I’m not happy about the snowplow that hit my car on Wednesday; I’m just thankful to be alive.”

Still, most would agree it is easier to be thankful and happy when you have the basics of life.

While measuring happiness is difficult, a variety of attempts have been made to do so.

Researchers at Britain’s University of Leicester have developed the “World Map of Happiness.”

Based upon 80,000 responses worldwide, they ranked 178 countries by their levels of happiness.

Self-reported happiness tracks closely with wealth. Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Iceland were all in the top 10 for both wealth and happiness.

Predictably, very poor countries, like Zimbabwe and Burundi, were both poor and unhappy.

Health is important for happiness, and health is also closely correlated with wealth. Zimbabwe has an AIDS rate of 25 percent and an average life expectancy of 39. Life expectancy in Denmark is nearly 80.

The United States is 14th on the list of happiest countries. Nearly all of the countries in the top 20 are industrialized, Western-style democracies.

So much for those socialist-worker utopias.

When it comes to ranking U.S. states by happiness, one thing is clear: None of the top five is in New England, while all are in warm or temperate areas: Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona have the highest levels of happiness.

Montana (seventh in the nation) and Maine (10th) are the only two cold-weather states to break the top 10. By the way, New Hampshire, the state most envied by Maine politicians, is 27th on the happiness scale.

Just as interestingly, most of the nation’s wealthiest states also seem to be the least happy, according to the study done by Hamilton College in New York.

Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland and the District of Columbia are among the wealthiest yet least happy places in the U.S. Truth be told, New Jersey and Connecticut are 49th and 50th, respectively.

The message, as other research has shown, is that it takes a certain minimal level of wealth to produce high happiness readings. At some point, however, higher levels of wealth may be associated with less happiness. Witness Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Maine, it seems, is close to the sweet spot on the happiness scale: Most of us are not too poor and not too wealthy, but somewhere in the happy middle.

And who’s to say that’s not the best place to be?

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The opinions expressed in this column represent the views of the ownership and editorial board.