Black Friday Culture

It’s almost that time of year again — the long awaited “holiday season.” Soon it will be Thanksgiving, and then Christmas will be just a breath away. It is the day after Thanksgiving, however, that has been on my heart more recently. That day is Black Friday.

I’ll be honest. I’ve done the Black Friday run several times, and it is a lot of fun. Looking through Black Friday ads on Thanksgiving, pushing your way through jam-packed stores, competing to snag that exclusive deal … there’s a sort of thrill to it all. Despite this, I find the day itself rather distasteful.

Thanksgiving is all about gratitude. We gather with our families over a lovingly prepared meal, we pray, and we talk about the things that we are grateful for — both material and immaterial.

Black Friday seems to laugh in the face of all of that. “Perhaps you were grateful yesterday,” it seems to say, “but today you just need more, more, more.”

Are we really that superficial? Is the depth of our gratitude truly so shallow that we can forget it from one day to the next?

Was it all just an act?

We live in a culture that jumps from one trend to another, that treats people like objects, and objects like God.

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about the people who go out on Black Friday to snag Christmas gifts that they otherwise could not afford, or the people who shop on the “holiday” casually, hunting for deals or taking advantage of the low prices. I’m not even talking about the people who are hard-core Black Friday shoppers, really. What I am talking about, is the culture that birthed it.

What I find so distasteful about Black Friday is that it trivializes the day before it. It makes our gratitude on Thanksgiving seem tacky — like a worn-out fad that we repeat year after year because it’s tradition, and because if we hurry up and go through the motions, then we can get to the good part, like stuffing our faces and going shopping.

We live in a culture that jumps from one trend to another, that treats people like objects, and objects like God. Stores open earlier and earlier, encroaching on what little bit of Thanksgiving we had left. They call to us, enticing us away from the warmth of our families, out into the cold where we wait for hours to buy more things to fill the emptiness in our already too-full homes.

And who can resist?

It’s like a feeding frenzy — like blood dripping into shark infested waters. People have died, being pushed down and trampled during the mad rush to snag something new, something better.

I say all of this, not to offer a solution — truth be told, I don’t have one — but to offer a plea.  My plea is this:

Don’t rush through the day — through Thanksgiving — so you can move on to something better. There is nothing better. What you have right now, it’s enough.

Think about what you are doing.

Think. Don’t rush through the day — through Thanksgiving — so you can move on to something better. There is nothing better. What you have right now, it’s enough.

Enjoy your families. Cherish them. Love them and let them love you. Do the same for your friends.

When you sit down on Thanksgiving to share a meal, be grateful. Say it out loud. Be specific. And mean it … not just superficially or for a time. Mean it from the bottom of your soul.

Then, that night, or early the next morning, if you decide to make your way out into the rush, do it from a place of peace. Do it with a heart that has been filled up, not with one that is empty and searching for material things to fill in the holes.