Sometimes success leads to gratitude, but it's more accurate to say that gratitude breeds success. And ingratitude breeds failure.

This is a common Biblical theme, best epitomized in the Book of Exodus. Shortly after God (through Moses) freed the people of Israel from slavery and brought them out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea, the people began to grumble at Moses:

"Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

Ultimately, it took a generation of wandering in the wilderness for the people's grumbling to stop. Only then, in a spirit of gratitude, were the people's hearts prepared to enter the Promised Land and to live in freedom.

The act of thanksgiving is the antidote to bitterness and envy, and so—without diminishing the greater religious significance of holidays such as Easter for Christians and Yom Kippur for Jews—I contend that Thanksgiving is the most important quintessentially American holiday.

When Americans pause and humbly reflect on the innumerable blessings that God has granted them, it bodes well for our nation's future.

As George Washington stated when he recommended designating Thursday, Nov. 26, 1789, as a national day of thanks, it's a day that "we may then all unite in rendering unto [God] our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country ..."

Over the course of human history, few people have had as much to be grateful for as the typical American does today.

Our blessings aren't just material, but Americans do enjoy a level of wealth and prosperity that is matched by few around the world—riches that would have been unimaginable to most people of the past.

With modern medicine, the typical American lives more than twice as long as Americans of Washington's period.

America's Constitution protects us from many kinds of tyranny. While opponents of liberty have gradually chipped away at our constitutional system, the Constitution continues to act as a bulwark against federal encroachment.

We have a rich national story that our Founding Fathers recognized was blessed by Divine Providence or a "finger of the Almighty hand."

Americans enjoy the freedom to worship God as we see fit. We take it for granted, but in many parts of the world, even owning a Bible is illegal or severely persecuted.

While attendance at worship services has been trending down for decades, US church attendance remains high by international standards.

We live in relative security under the protection of the greatest military on Earth. And while the world remains a dangerous place, only a small (by historical standards) percentage of US troops are currently serving in active combat zones.

The list could go on of things for which we should be thankful—both as individuals and collectively as Americans.

We must all choose whether to live in gratitude or whether to live in resentment over what others have and we lack. And politicians and public figures must decide whether they will appeal to people's better angels or to the bitter root of envy.

Some engage in class warfare and feed into resentment and ingratitude—mindsets that can only drag down our nation.

They liken the wealthy to heroin addicts because of their "uncontrollable greed," they claim that most successful CEOs are psychopaths, and even admit that their end goal is to seize the means of production, in clear reference to Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto."

Instead of following politicians down paths of resentment and strife, let's instead follow the tradition of thanksgiving that Washington began.

In the words of our fourth president, James Madison, in his 1815 Thanksgiving Proclamation:

"No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the Great Disposer of Events of the Destiny of Nations than the people of the United States." Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Preston Brashers is a research fellow for tax policy in The Heritage Foundation's Grover M. Hermann Center for the federal budget.

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Thanksgiving: The Quintessential American Holiday

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