All right, a little back story to this one.

Last Friday, which I’m sure you all recognize as Black Friday, I was coming home from visiting my Grandparents. The TV was playing the news, and as I walked through the room, I noticed the station was going through a number of Black Friday-related deaths and injuries caused by shooting, stabbing, or just plain physical brutality.

I was on the fence for a time, trying to avoid writing the oh-so-common article reminding people to be thankful on Thanksgiving. Certainly you’ve already heard that same preaching, but I’m seriously at wits end.

Has our world really degraded to such a point where we are willing to trample, maim, and shoot other’s because our will to buy superfluous trinkets and contraptions has become too great to ignore? Is that Xbox One at 50 percent off really worth thirteen stiches? Is that leather jacket going to look good with the cast it got you? Most people see how absurd this is, but the truth is that there are people out there who don’t question these actions.

A good portion of U.S. citizens have become so infatuated with commodities and the illusion of “saving money” that they have lost touch with their own sense of morality and humanity.

It’s Thanksgiving. Certainly we should be grateful for being able to shop, to drive, to live in a house with where we can put these new purchases, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about having family, having a community, and having a beating heart.