The joy of Thanksgiving the settlers experienced came at the expense of the Native Americans. Even though they were the ones who taught the pilgrims how to farm the land, they were soon forgotten in the rush for money and land.
Thanksgiving is meant to be a day of, well, giving thanks. How did the early settlers reconcile their observance of this holiday with their treatment of the Native Americans? It doesn't really make sense, to be partying while stepping all over an entire group of people.
You can still see this mentality today in the Black Friday craze. Americans line up for hours and trample each other for the sake of material wealth. Every year, there are reports of people literally crushed to death by the crowd. You could say Black Friday is the antithesis of Thanksgiving, and yet it takes place the day after. We make the shift from grateful to greedy overnight without seeing an issue. Not only that, Black Friday sales have been gradually taking up more time, starting earlier and ending later, in an effort to boost sales.
This also leads back to the Roaring Twenties. It was a period of lavish spending as the economy soared. Just look at the scale and grandeur of Gatsby's parties--yet, despite all of his wealth, Gatsby wasn't truly happy. The statement "money can't buy happiness" is often ridiculed as something only the poor say, but I believe there's still some truth to it.
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