Bright Friday
No, Virginia, you DON'T have to shop at 5:00 in the morning. What's more, you equally don't have to camp out overnight at Best Buy to make sure you get some "gotta have" item a month before Christmas. There is not the faintest reason the day after Thanksgiving must be a Black Friday when shopping is tension and pain, when the season of thanks turns into a day of fatigue and frustration.
I checked the weather map this morning (intellicast.com, click on "radar"); it's clear pretty much all over the country. It's a Bright Friday and, for those fixated on mobbing the stores, a good day to walk around the block, invite a neighbor in for tea, rake the leaves leisurely. Anything.
If it was on the shelves waiting to be sold last night, it will be on the shelves again before Christmas. If lining up in front of a store is part of a post-Thanksgiving national ritual, so be it – but do think how you will explain this to your grandchildren without sounding like an idiot. Perhaps this has become the opening ritual of our observance of the birth of Christ: first we journey to the store, as Mary and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem, then we camp out as they did when the inns were filled, then we triumphantly return home with our “baby,” the item we longed for these many months.
I may have started something here. Send this to all the Sociology profs you know in the secular colleges and let’s see how far it gets. We could have a new understanding of how America participates in the Nativity story.
I checked the weather map this morning (intellicast.com, click on "radar"); it's clear pretty much all over the country. It's a Bright Friday and, for those fixated on mobbing the stores, a good day to walk around the block, invite a neighbor in for tea, rake the leaves leisurely. Anything.
If it was on the shelves waiting to be sold last night, it will be on the shelves again before Christmas. If lining up in front of a store is part of a post-Thanksgiving national ritual, so be it – but do think how you will explain this to your grandchildren without sounding like an idiot. Perhaps this has become the opening ritual of our observance of the birth of Christ: first we journey to the store, as Mary and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem, then we camp out as they did when the inns were filled, then we triumphantly return home with our “baby,” the item we longed for these many months.
I may have started something here. Send this to all the Sociology profs you know in the secular colleges and let’s see how far it gets. We could have a new understanding of how America participates in the Nativity story.
posted by Tom Carten at 10:55 AM
1 Comments:
I like your version of the American Christmas Story. Even though it's sad, I'm hoping for a happy ending for all.
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