I know I can't be the only one to make this observation, but has anyone else noticed how sad it is that we celebrate a holiday in America called "Thanksgiving" only to follow it by a second holiday called "Black Friday?"
Thanksgiving is supposed to be this humble day in which everyone can sit down, reflect, and express gratitude for all the precious blessings we enjoy in life. The act of quiet reflection and expressing gratitude doesn't have to be religious. It has no political agenda. It's such a beautiful holiday because it can apply to everyone, whether Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist or atheist. You can be poor, you can be an alcoholic, you can be lonely, and yet you can always find something to be grateful for. It doesn't much matter what you have to be grateful for because it's the feeling of gratitude itself that softens your heart. Cicero wrote, "Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others." I agree with that statement. When a man takes the time to cultivate gratitude, things like anger, greed, selfishness, annoyance, lust, slothfulness, etc. can't remain in his heart.
So we have this beautiful day set aside, and it's being utterly destroyed by corporate America in several ways. First, there's Christmas creep. This is the phenomenon of "celebrating" Christmas earlier and earlier in the year. As a small child, I recall Christmas decorations only appeared on homes and in public after Thanksgiving. This year, apparently Halloween was the new Thanksgiving. There were Christmas decorations being put out on October 30th. Our society is now devoting a full two months out of the year to celebrate Christmas. That's one-sixth of the year.
There are probably several reasons for this happening. The first is that corporate entities like Target and Wal-Mart and Albertsons realize the deep psychological connection that customers have with the Christmas holiday. It's a holiday that's made for spending a lot of money. It's a happy holiday. We associate it with happy childhood feelings. We associate it with receiving beautiful shiny gifts and such. I'm sure there's some chart somewhere that lays out the statistical correlation between happy feelings of nostalgia and consumer spending.
Thanksgiving gets pushed out of the picture in this way. To the stores and the media the day is just a quick pit stop on the way to Christmas. The corporate world barely even acknowledge its existence anymore. This wouldn't be a problem except that the vast majority of Americans live their lives completely immersed in the media and the corporate world. I work with young students, and the influence of the media is not lost on them. If anything, it's much stronger. Little kids don't know how to read a calendar and don't yet have a good grasp on the flow of time. Yet they were in my classroom a full two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday telling me, "It's going to be Christmas next week!" and "I can't wait until Christmas comes tomorrow!" Who told these kids it was Christmas time? Nobody. They just saw all the commercials, all the decorations, all the Santa Clauses and Christmas trees and overplayed music droning in the stores around town, and assumed it must be any day now. I feel sorry for the kids. I remember how excruciating it was to wait for Christmas as a child, back when time didn't exist. It was just 24 days for me, yet it felt like a lifetime. These kids have to wait almost 60. Thanksgiving doesn't even register as a day for these children.
Second: Is it just me or has there been a sharp uptick in the expression "Turkey Day"? I seem to recall I wrote about this once on this very blog, but I can't remember. I remember back in the day they had the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day Special, which at the time was cute and funny. These days, though, the name "Turkey Day" is seriously replacing Thanksgiving altogether. I'm not even kidding here. I was at the store the other day and I overheard an older adults say to another, "So what have you got planned for Turkey Day?" They weren't trying to be cute or funny, either, as far as I could tell. I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey Day becomes to Thanksgiving what "Happy Holidays" is to Christmas.
A third way that Thanksgiving is being dismantled is by the 21st century holiday of "Black Friday." This is a day when all the stores supposedly put out their best "deals" and everyone goes out into the bitter cold and darkness to spend their hard-earned money on these deals. People have been trampled to death at these orgies. There's not a lot I can say about this day that hasn't already probably been said better elsewhere. All I will say is that I find it difficult to keep a spirit of humble gratitude in my heart when I'm out amongt thousands of other people, bleary-eyed and cold, jostling my way through an overcrowded store at 4:00 AM to purchase some video game or a new printer for 20% off the original price.
I'm not saying that they are morally bad people, I'm just saying that the newly cultivated spirit of thankfulness we start to have on Thursday afternoon as we sit down to dinner with family and friends is obliterated less than 12 hours later. It's just so sad to me. How was Thanksgiving like in the 1960's? The 70's? The 80's? Am I just getting older and more bitter, and that's why everything seems to have changed? Or was there a time in post-war, modern America where the Thanksgiving holiday was spent mostly at home, mostly with family and friends? I'm not much of a sports fan, but the thought of a family just sitting down to enjoy a football game on TV seems more peaceful and filled with gratitude than the insane rush of shopping.
I picture a Thanksgiving week twenty years ago. A family spends their day together on Thanksgiving. They have their Thanksgiving meal in the afternoon, and since they have no family or friends in this new town that they've recently moved to, they decide to go for a car ride together. As they drive around, the mother and father notice that the movie theater is still open, and they decide to take in a movie with the kids since almost every other business in town is closed. The theater is mostly empty, but there are several other families there. Afterward they return home. They play cards, they play Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo, mom knits, dad reads the paper and naps on the couch. All the evening, everybody is merrily eating leftovers. The following day is more of the same. It's cold outside and there's nothing to do anyway.
I'm describing an actual memory I have here. It was from a time before Black Friday. It was from a time when corporations kept their businesses closed on Thanksgiving, not just because they figured not many people would come, but also to allow their employees to stay home and spend time with their families. It appears that those days are gone now, and it makes me sad. I remember that time before everything was open 24/7, and it created a beautiful feeling of security and of calm. When nothing was open, you never felt like you were missing anything by just staying at home. You felt happy to stay at home because you felt like it was where you were supposed to be. There were fewer distractions, then.
In just the past ten years I've witnessed "Black Friday" morph into "Black Friday Week" and now "Black Friday Month." More and more stores are pushing the "Black Friday" into "Black Thursday" by staying open on Thanksgiving or opening their stores earlier and earlier. This year I see ads for stores opening at the ungodly hour of 3:00 AM. I want to know: why the hell do we need to be shopping at 3:00 AM? From what I've observed, it's not really very fun. It's not like standing in line for the release of a certain movie or video game where you're with a bunch of like-minded people because this kind of shopping requires you to be at odds with everyone else. It's not even much of a money-saver, considering you're buying crap that you wouldn't have purchased otherwise. So why, then? Why the hell does some poor schmuck need to go in to work at 3:00 AM just so somebody can buy a discounted fondue pot or the hottest new piece of crap from Apple? Of course people counter with, "But sir, these employees receive extra pay! And they probably don't even care about the holiday anyway! It helps them AND it helps us! Win win!"
Yet again I wonder: what was Thanksgiving like in the eighties? In the seventies? Sixties? Fifties? Where were all those poor schmucks who desperately wanted to go to work on Thanksgiving day in 1978? Were they upset that they didn't get to work that day? Did they wish they could go in to work that day because they sure could use the extra money? Is that why things have changed? Are you naysayers telling me that Thanksgiving is changing because it was a big fat waste of money?
I suppose it's not as bad as I make it out to be, though. In the end, every individual has control over his or her family environment. The best way to combat this attitude of greed and stupidity is to just not participate, and to shield the children from it, too. The easy way to do this would be to cut the media and the corporate world out of your life as much as possible. I can only imagine that life is better without them.
Here's a talk on gratitude by Thomas S. Monson:
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1298-27,00.html
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