Since misery loves company, one characteristic of unhappy people is that they want others to be as unhappy as they are. If they’re immersed in vice, common among the miserable, their envy inspires them to also want to take from others good things they can’t have and which reflect a purity they don’t possess. This can come to mind when considering the Left’s war on Thanksgiving.
As to this, there “has been a lot of talk among campus progressives in recent years about the need to ‘decolonize’ Thanksgiving,” writes American Thinker’s Eric Utter today. “For example, the University of Oregon held an event titled ‘Thanks, but No Thanks-giving,’ the description of which read in part: ‘Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe.’”
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“Sure. Show me a family that doesn’t gather around the dining room table with bowed heads, saying, ‘We thank Thee for the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe,’” Utter continues, illustrating absurdity by being absurd. “‘Let us celebrate!’”
The writer also points out that the waning Huffington Post, currently being sold, “recently suggested that Thanksgiving be canceled due to its large carbon footprint.”
In reality, many of these culture-killers couldn’t care less about “carbon footprints”; were it otherwise, they probably would excoriate their wealthy fellow travelers for traveling on private jets. They also might frown upon BLM rioters who think massive CO2 emission (setting fires) is legitimate protest.
As for “genocide against native peoples,” there not only isn’t an ongoing one; there never was one to begin with. Most of the American Indians who perished due to European colonization died of newly introduced diseases, which, historically, have often been a tragic consequence of population-mixing.
Note here that germ theory wasn’t even originated, let alone proven, until 40 years after Christopher Columbus’s death. Renaissance Europeans had no way of knowing they carried microorganisms that could kill anymore than they knew, earlier in history, that they’d be killed by microorganisms from Asia (e.g., smallpox, bubonic plague).
But the facts don’t matter because this is about errant emotion, not rightly-used reason. As Utter points out, “Ironically, the coddled and entitled, like many students and professors on college campuses, are often the least grateful. Those who seem to have everything are often the least thankful.”
“Rich, spoiled Hollywood types foam at the mouth (when they’re not stuffing it with caviar and expensive champagne), railing against Trump and his supporters and a laundry list of supposed ‘systemic’ injustices inherent to the country that has allowed them to get rich pretending to be someone they’re not,” he elaborated. “Meanwhile, those in ‘flyover country’ with comparatively little are often deeply thankful for what they do have, and grateful to be living in the United States of America.”
“Decade after decade, it seems as though the better off we’ve gotten, the less religious and appreciative we’ve become,” Utter concludes. “Our material wealth has not led to spiritual wealth. In fact, it appears to have led to a certain Sodom and Gomorrah–like moral poverty.”
This is no coincidence — not anymore than it’s coincidence that ardent Christians birthed Thanksgiving.
In the modern age, sadly, holidays and even Holy Days have been hollowed out. Christmas is about presents; Easter about bunnies and chocolate eggs; and Thanksgiving about turkey, football, and, maybe, the materialistic Black Friday that follows. As the name suggests, however, Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. Yet this presupposes that “there must be a recipient to whom we are giving thanks,” as author and radio host Rod Thomson put it in 2018.
“We are literally giving something,” he continued. “Without there being a recipient of that gift, thankfulness seems an ultimately empty gesture. Thankful to an empty, uncaring, purposeless universe?”
This is why it’s no surprise that too many today, being secular to the bone, are envious and ungrateful. It’s also no coincidence that they’re terribly unhappy.
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought,” wrote G.K. Chesterton in 1917, “and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” A very deep statement, we can begin to understand it with a simple point. Are we not happy — perhaps even at our happiest — when thankful? On the other hand, aren’t we absolutely miserable when feeling denied something we think we’re owed?
Some may now say that the link between thankfulness and happiness is not causal but correlative. We’re both thankful and happy because we got something we wanted, perhaps something unearned, is the thinking. If this is so, then the secret to happiness could be to get something we want, a gift, all the time. This actually is possible — in a sense.
It’s not a matter of abundance. Were this so, then, again, our supermarkets teeming with food and wall-to-wall luxuries would make us history’s most joyous people. This is, rather, a matter of attitude. What breeds that spirit of entitlement? And what tames it?
To reiterate, it’s no shock that Christians gave us Thanksgiving; it’s also no shock that secularists want to take it away. A person who doesn’t look up to God too often looks down on others, and his ego can grow to the point of self-deification. And what doesn’t a god deserve?
Yet the attitude of Thanksgiving’s fathers was very different, and I believe it’s well explained by the following.
At a gathering once and in a modernist fit of pique, a man I know expressed the idea that Christianity “is a religion for losers.” Harsh? Well, note something:
He was right.
For we’re all losers.
In that we’re all sinners.
Relevant here is not just that this tenet of Christianity is true but that, in accordance with Truth’s character, it’s also utilitarian. For gratitude flows from humility, which is born of this knowledge of our fallen state. Upon accepting my sinfulness, I realize I deserve nothing — but damnation. But Christianity also informs that I needn’t suffer such a fate because God is merciful. He is generous, too, and lavishes an unearned bounty upon me.
So to paraphrase Chesterton, goods look a lot better when wrapped as gifts — and everything truly is a gift.
And one of the greatest gifts is the following knowledge: A truly happy person knows he is not God, and the better he knows it, the happier he is. So let’s make our fall feast an even happier day, by putting the Thanks and the giving back in Thanksgiving.
