So today is the day after Thanksgiving, a day of reflection and rest for our family. We have had a leisurely time and will soon go out and cut down a tree as per our family Christmas tradition. We enjoy the decorating process, and having the tree up for a whole month is something our kids look forward to each year.
This restful time is not how many people around here, and across the nation, spend the day after Thanksgiving. I never heard of Black Friday until I moved up here to Pennsylvania. Maybe I lived in a cave or under a rock or something, but when I arrived here I discovered people got up at three and four in the morning to go shopping in an orgy of consumption on the day after Thanksgiving. There are stores that open at twelve midnight so the fun can begin even earlier. Hotels are filled to capacity on Thanksgiving evening as people anticipate the rush of finding “bargains” and sales for things they probably do not need all that much. I am sure this existed in Virginia where I grew up and I was just unaware of it. Plus I lived several years in Europe and the practice did not exist while I was there.
It is scary that our economy is built around this level of consumption. I find it distasteful. It could just be my personality. I generally get up early, but I like to begin my day in the quiet, reading, thinking, drinking coffee; just being. Going out to fight the crowds and finding the best deal does nothing for me. Sometimes I think of the Christian martyrs and how they fought a different battle altogether and it makes more sense to me. Instead of struggling to find a deal and pushing past the fellow inhabitants of the planet, they struggled to achieve closeness to God and engage their fellow travelers in the process. I have a long way to go to become that focused on being holy, but it is a battle I aspire to.
Today I was listening to the news and saw how a worker at one store was trampled to death by the pressing crowed. The people literally pushed the doors off the hinges and rushed in, trampling the hapless clerk in the process. A young pregnant woman, and several other people, were also knocked around and needed to be evaluated in the hospital.
In my opinion this kind of behavior is obscene and immoral. And by that I do not only mean trampling someone to death. Some of the same people who are concerned that Obama will lead our society to a less moral state freely engage in this orgy without a second thought. Some of the most socially/politically conservative people I know seem not to think of this obscenity as anything but normal behavior. But in our fixation on our own comfort we ignore those who need clean drinking water. As we rush to buy the latest time-saving device, those who hunger must look on in amazement at such self-focus.
God grant us mercy to find the proper balance between thrifty purchases and sharing with our neighbors across the street and around the world. And may God grant mercy on the family of that poor man who was trampled to death for the sake of a good deal.
Peace,
Leon
Right on!
Well said, indeed.
Yes
Um. I’m actually pretty sure the folks participating in the obscene ritual you describe include the sadly mistaken folks who have “put their trust in princes” and think Pres.-Elect Obama will lead us to the Promised Land. In fact, the perpetrators in the Long Island trampling incident were almost certainly (statistically speaking) among the most frothy of the Obama supporters.
I was with you right up to that paragraph of illogical conclusion-jumping.
Dcn. David.
Sorry I lost you there. I did not mean to imply that only social/political conservatives engage in the orgy. I only wanted to point out that immorality takes on various guises, and the people I know who protest Obama as the end of morality are some of those who most fully participate in the Black Friday consumption ritual.
As far as any politician or party leading us into the “Promised Land” I am not a believer. True change will not be brought about by altering the political landscape. Rather it comes by the struggle I noted above, that of being close to God. That being said I have more hope in the potential of our President elect than I would have had had McCain been elected, and certainly more hope than the current administration. It is just not ultimate hope.
Peace,
Leon
I still think you need to check your stats. I’m pretty sure the orgy is an equal opportunity problem. Do you really think the folks “who protest[ed] Obama” were more likely to “participate in the Black Friday consumption ritual” than folks who supported the Obama campaign? C’mon. If that were so, then problems like the Long Island Wal-Mart stampede wouldn’t have happened.
Your thesis could be better, more objectively advanced if you had also pointed out the hypocrisy of the Lefties, who claims to care about their fellows, but nevertheless participate fully–as fully as their Right Wing brethren–in grabbing the last X-box off the shelf.