Completely Malled
The Source
They don’t call it black Friday for nothing. Twice in my lifetime I’ve ventured out in the insanity called Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, both times at the request of a friend. Yes, I’m an advocate of shopping locally, but it pains me even more to see folks who I know and love take part in the craziness. “Crazy” is too much of a lightweight word for it. It makes it sound funny and it’s not. Nearly every Christmas season brings us a new tale of a shopper or her child being crushed when they opened the Mega-Gift doors at midnight. I know people who treat it as a safari to Africa…they expect adventure, they anticipate a few wounds here and there and most importantly they fully intend to bag some game. In recent Black Friday frenzies two men shot each other, a pregnant woman miscarried, and a Long Island a store employee was trampled to death. Said his sobbing sister, “They pushed him down and walked all over him.” The shooting deaths came from Palm Desert, California. The store owner said he didn’t think it was caused by Black Friday. “The men were in a bad mood.” Yeah..me too. In Madison Wisconsin a woman cut to the front of a long line at Toys R Us and when the other customers complained she threatened to get a gun and shoot. She was fined. Now isn’t that just dandy. What in God’s name have we done to the celebration of a baby in a manger? I heard my first Christmas song in local store on the day after Halloween. November 1st for gosh sakes! There was a nation-wide hurrah when somebody figured out that we’d have a few more extra days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. The nation could be saved! The Annie E. Casey Foundation studies such things a childhood poverty and Illinois ranks pretty much in the middle of the pack of states with one-fourth of our kids living below the poverty level. Some counties in Southern Illinois top forty percent. A Facebook friend sent two pictures side by side. One was a shot of two ladies fighting their way through Black Friday shopping aisles, both of whose heads were nearly obscured by their mounds of dolls and toys. The second picture showed a group of naked third world children, their famished bellies distended and their hands reaching out. There was nothing Photo Shopped about either picture. We all know that both are real. A former student of mine was home from college for Thanksgiving break. We’d planned to get together over the weekend to catch up so I gave her a call. That’s when she gave me the great news that cancelled our lunch date. “I’m sorry, but I forgot. The day of Thanksgiving is my craft day.” “Craft day?” “It’s the day I spend making crafts for my Christmas gifts.” “You don’t shop?” “Oh, one or two things, maybe. But my grandma taught me a long time ago that people appreciate simple gifts if you make them yourself. I’ll be spending Friday…” “You mean Black Friday?” “What’s that?” She couldn’t hear me jump for joy. She’d never heard the term, and no she doesn’t attend college down some dark hole. It never occurred to her to spend the Christmas season trying to out-buy her friends. Last year I was travelling home from Bloomington when a friend called to see if he could hitch a ride back to Jacksonville on the day after Thanksgiving. I told him that I’d gladly bring him home, but when zipping around Springfield he remembered that he needed to pick up something at the White Oaks Mall. Maybe it was the traffic or the sun was in my eyes, but I completely forgot that it was Black Friday. It’s not a date I redline on my calendar. When I pulled into the mall parking lot I got a flashback from several years ago when a British friend of mine insisted on visiting the place on the day after Thanksgiving to in his words, “See Americans at their worst.” It was a madhouse. The cars, the harried looks in the eyes of the shoppers, the insanity of the season. I sat in the car and secretly hoped that God would dump two feet of white Christmas on top of Black Friday.