Black Friday and Blue Thursday?
Due to the bad economy, merchants seem desperate to bring in customers to the malls, superstores, and boutiques. If you are a patriotic American, I suppose, you’d start your Christmas purchases before Halloween…or, at least, starting at the same time you’re buying all that Halloween candy required to make the little tykes need fluoride. Not only has Black Friday become a consumer tradition, many of those superstores are throwing their doors open to their super sales on Thanksgiving.
Not only do I hear about crazy consumers ready to forego the family eating orgy and head off for those sales, the store employees are forced to leave their relatives and friends to attend to the onslaught of zombies looking for those early Black Friday bargain. Let’s call it Blue Thursday in recognition of how sad it truly is. We should even adopt Elvis’ Christmas song—I’m sure someone can adapt the lyrics to reflect the forlorn turkey. After all, that gobbler was sacrificed on the altar of family love and universal friendship—his sacrifice shouldn’t be in vain.
Those early Pilgrims—when they weren’t trampling on the religious freedoms of other colonists—and their Native American friends, whom they later dispatched with small pox, probably wouldn’t understand Black Friday or the more recent Blue Thursday. That first Thanksgiving was more like the homeless getting together to feed themselves. If there were turkeys, they’d be tough, stringy birds shot down from trees with a blunderbuss (a precursor to a twenty-gauge). That first Thanksgiving was a blunder-bust—I can just see the Native Americans looking across the table and wondering, “When are these white SOBs going to start killing us?” It was similar to the PLO dining with West Bank settlers—no love between the two groups.
Back to the grubby, greedy merchants who ruin Thanksgiving for customers and employees alike, those hawkers of goods and wares who are always screaming at us that there are only so many days left before Christmas. Since my ammo is words, let me throw a few choice ones their way: Don’t rationalize your greediness by claiming that this is the season of giving. It’s not about giving, at least not about giving anything they’re selling. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, you name it—these are holidays about giving love and friendship to relatives and friends. No gifts are needed, Mr. Merchant, just a big hug—and thank you, you don’t sell those.
Too many people are alone on holidays. Maybe some people want to be alone, but most people don’t. I was alone one Thanksgiving in Amherst, MA. My family was still in South America. A fellow student, an Argentine, invited me to dinner. One of the best Thanksgivings I’ve ever had. I just about froze riding my bike back to my little studio apartment, but it was worth it. A colleague of mine had the custom of inviting those he called “Thanksgiving orphans” to dinner at his place. My first years that I attended, I was a single parent—Tom and friends became family for me and my kids.
You don’t have to go work in a soup kitchen to spread some love on Thanksgiving or any of the other holidays I’ve mentioned. Just think a moment about the lonely people you know. Maybe it’s just your Great Aunt Dora in a nursing home. Most nursing homes allow families to attend their communal Thanksgiving dinner. Sure, you might have to pay a little for really sucky food, but spreading a little love to Dora is priceless.
Of course, you can enjoy a good feast with family and friends too. If your family is dysfunctional, throw down a few and bite your tongue. The liquor makes it easier to be sociable and it will keep you off the roads to the malls.
Avoid Blue Thursday and Black Friday at all costs. Anything you might save is not worth giving the merchants the satisfaction that they can control your lives. And I’m sorry for the people who must work for those merchants, tending to the crowds of idiots who believe in the consumer god. That god is cold and unfeeling, a pagan idol for capitalism gone crazy.
Happy Thanksgiving!
[Note: Due to the holiday, there will be no “News and Notices from the Writing Trenches” tomorrow.]
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