Black Friday Slip

It’s 8:00 a.m., November 26, and most folks are at the store shopping, at home shopping, or heading to work wishing they were shopping. My own present activity adds another possibility: at home watching the kids while my spouse is shopping.

The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday – the largest annual retail spree in the U.S. – and I wish I could say I’m resisting it intentionally with alternatives like Buy Nothing Day and Advent Conspiracy. Since the late 90s I’ve tried to be an aid in keeping our excessive consumer tendencies in check, but I fear I’m becoming less efficacious with age. Every year I slip more comfortably into the allure of this American life.

I saw the slip more clearly this past week.

It started when I asked our adult Sunday School members to describe movements they had joined. The discussion struggled to emerge so I clarified that it didn’t have to be a world-hunger-solution movement. How about collaboration to stop a bully? Or kicking off a recycling program at work? Still not much response, except for one woman who remembered petitioning to add a high school Ping-Pong class for the girls. It wasn't fair that the boys had one.

My wife suggested afterward that participation in movements may not be all that common. "You work with people who facilitate change in the world," she said. For many years, my office mates included nuns who had been arrested dozens of times for cause-related activity. I assumed this was somewhat normal.

I also assumed I had been in on the action. To test this assumption I took inventory of my actual role and realized that proximity had convinced me of personal activity. I was so close to it that it felt like I had been part of it. What I discovered were fantasy memories. Then to make matters worse, I realized that I'm not even creating new fantasies as often as I used to.

Amos who?

On Monday - with the class discussion still in mind - I read Amos 6:4-7. I remembered how Amos’s message to the religious, consumptive and comfortable masses used to provoke me. I would side with him, echoing those words with conviction. Now I’m practically in the audience wondering if this guy should back down: “Amos, Amos,” I say, “you’re making too much of it all. We’re not like those heathens. Tell God we follow most of his ways. Try to relax a little.”

Regarding Black Friday, I used to promote alternatives such as Buy Nothing Day because I read Adbusters Magazine, fumed over copywriter bullies and implored advertising majors to counter Madison Avenue trends. Now I disregard Black Friday simply because it’s too far from Christmas.

There. I said it. I'm a last-minute shopper and wouldn't go out on Black Friday even if I had nothing against it. I recall the years we lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, when snow blanketed the city and newscasters warned that only 4x4s should try the roads. I’d lock the hubs on Christmas Eve and venture into the white terrain to shop. That’s my real reason for avoiding the November blitz: procrastination.

Getting comfortable

At first I blamed others for pushing me toward the mainstream. Then I realized I wanted to go there. Everyone else was just being honest while I fought me as much as the issues I claimed to care about.

So here I am. I’ll buy nothing today, but staying home and offline won’t cost me personally. Perhaps I should use the time to consider that I have another forty or fifty years to live. Is comfort – like the recliner I fantasize about getting – the goal from here on out? I can’t confirm it as writing on the wall, but maybe this symbolizes my search for the leisure decades ahead, and the wrong kind of heaven.

Where are those nuns when I need them?

Carts by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post written by Sam Van Eman.