• The Aztecs had a rite of human sacrifice wherein a priest would excise the heart of a female victim from her body with an obsidian dagger and offer that still beating heart to the Aztec deity. We should not be astonished at the miraculous conversion to Catholic Christianity of the indigenous persons of Mexico in a little over a decade after the Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  If some anticlerical secularists in our culture are to be believed, we should be resentful that the indigenous religion was abandoned. Those nostalgic for the old religion are obviously in no danger of having their own hearts ripped out.
  • So we have another Thanksgiving and America has an opportunity to express gratitude. How can one even begin to express gratitude in our Culture of Entitlement? Gratitude makes us uncomfortable. We do not ever want to be uncomfortable!!!! Never. Ever. 
  • Are you grateful for the modicum of comfort you enjoy? Why be grateful for something you are entitled to? If we remember the Pilgrims and others who celebrated Thanksgiving nearly 400 years ago, we can always dredge up every wrong committed by European immigrants subsequently from 1620 who treated others shamefully and shabbily, wrongly. That will stifle, even smother, this humbling spirit of gratitude. My experience among my fellow  recovering drug addicts and alcoholics in my circle of friends is that gratitude has to be instilled among us.  We feel entitled to feel good.  We drunks and druggies act on our sense of entitlement by using.
  • The Culture of Entitlement and Resentment is fueled by the fires of Envy.  One is entitled to a free college education, free healthcare, safe neighborhoods, clean air, clean water, and somebody else, not you, has to pay for it. Those who have more than you obviously stole it, in one way or another.
  • If you don’t have all that you desire, the proper attitude is covetousness directed at those who have more, not gratitude for what you do have.
  • It’s a prescription for discontent.  So the logical break from a day of Thanksgiving is to rush out and jump back on the acquisition merry-go-round. That these are purchases intended as gifts is merely a different salve for our egos, proving to ourselves that not only are we savvy consumers, but think of others, almost as much as we think about ourselves, but not quite.
  • Gratitude. Get some.