While having various meanings in the past, Black Friday has congealed to mean the day retailers plan on turning a profit, as in being “in the black”. It has also become a domestic disgrace, a black mark on our national character. Black Friday is an insane feeding frenzy, where stuff is consumed that will become obsolete and end up in a landfill almost as quickly as our turkey is ingested and excreted. Thanksgiving has been one of the few holidays not contaminated with commercialism; it seems the only choice of retail interests has been to just obliterate it, replacing it with Black Thursday. On the bright side, perhaps now we can dispense with the myth that the First Thanksgiving was anything other than a prelude to genocide. Thanksgiving was supposed to be all about family. Where are the family values people when we could actually use them? Golly gee they must be shopping. Yesterday shoppers got punched, pushed, gunned down, tasered, and rammed. One shopper was quoted as saying this was crazy but felt powerless, like she had no choice but to shop. In a 12 Step program that’s Step One, to admit to being powerless over a substance or an activity. Will Rogers wrote that “advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have on something they don’t need”. If Rogers were alive today, quite possibly he wouldn’t accuse big government or gay marriage or holiday trees of “bringing down the country”. He might say the real culprit is stuff.
I think I needed to hear this, thanks.
This post really made me think.