I went shopping the other day.   I didn’t mean to…  Well, I did, I guess, but I was distracted by the task at hand and I didn’t think about what day it was.

Black Friday!

Just the name itself should warn people against leaving their homes.  I think they should give people more shopping time and move it to a Friday earlier in the month.  That way they could call it Black Friday the 13^th. The name would be more portentous, giving it an even more ominous sound.  In addition, the occurrence would drop substantially, since Friday the 13^th in November doesn’t occur very often.

Had I remembered it was “The Purge”[i] shopping day, I’d have left the house with body armor and a firearm of some sort.  Actually, the last time I left the house that early in the morning, I was going hunting.  And, in retrospect, I now feel bad that I was shooting at things that didn’t treat me near as poorly as Black Friday shoppers…  Don’t follow that line of thought.  I have, and it doesn’t lead anywhere good, trust me.

Why do we do these things?  Shopping like barbarians, not hunting like barbarians, I mean.  I’ll address that at another time.  Granted, IF we happen to be early enough, we can buy a 90 inch high definition TV for $139.00 or a year’s supply of aromatic (?) candles for $7.50.  Still, is that enough to surrender our humanity?  Yeah, stupid question, I know.  Still, people do it year after year.  I’ve heard families call it a “tradition”.  Many of them spend time on Thanksgiving Day gathering together, celebrating their appreciation for all they have and then, after a wonderful meal is finished and everything is put away, they strategically plan how to attack the participating retail establishments in order to defeat any other shoppers who DARE to capture the best deals!  You know, the things they were thankful for yesterday.

Okay, that may sound a bit “military” in nature, but the metaphor is there to relate the aggression many people carry into the endeavor.  Actually, comparing the approach to a military action is unfair.  No self-respecting modern military organization would consider fielding such an undisciplined group of soldiers.

All the same, people who use this event as an excuse to get out and jump start their Christmas shopping are probably doing themselves, as well as retail establishments,  a favor – even while doing the rest of us a disservice.  They are playing PAWN to the Capitalist Dogs!  They’re assisting the bourgeoisie institutions to keep the common people DOWN!  They are simply…

Sorry.  I think I was channeling Groucho Marx for a moment…or maybe John Lennon (or Lenin), I’m not sure.  Where was I?

Oh, yes, the disservice!  Many of us have family members who have to work early in the morning, forcing us to cut our day of giving thanks back to an early afternoon of celebration so Uncle Mike can get to bed ‘cause he has to be at work at 3 AM.   And, because we have to do a midday dinner instead of supper, we have to get up and start cooking instead of taking those few more lovely minutes of sleep we look forward to at holidays.  Can’t go to Grandma’s for the weekend because Sally has to work – NOBODY gets THIS weekend off!  Nope!  No family game-time this evening folks, but it’s okay because we can save ourselves a couple of bucks in the morning.  That is, if you practiced your blocking, elbowing and tripping techniques.  So, by all means, let’s reward those greedy merchandisers for messing up our holiday just so they can get the money they were likely to get anyway!

Now that I’ve taken it to the ACR’s (American Capitalist Retailers), I need to buttonhole the cause of the problem; the ROUS’s…  No, that’s a different acronym[ii].  The situation is caused by the GASP (Greedy As Sh…, no, Greedy American Shopping Public).

Yes, WE did it!  WE caused the problem in the first place.  Technically, a small percentage of the shopping public caused the problem by falling for the advertising propaganda and rushing to the store on the whim of some kid with a Bachelor’s in Marketing and a burning desire for a corner office.  He got a promotion and you got sore feet from standing in line and a loose incisor from a feisty old lady in the electronics department.  The worst part is, since a portion of Americans took their whole Christmas shopping fund to the store on ONE DAY, the business community said, “Hey!  That’s pretty good!  Let’s stop now.”

Okay, yeah.  I was just seeing if you were paying attention.  What they did is continue to urge you to overspend your holiday budget.  This must have worked on some people, because next years new kid with the Bachelors of Marketing, in an attempt to show his worth and try for his very own corner office, came up with the amazing suggestion of increasing the amount of the sales and starting them earlier.  As the years went by, the hours got earlier, the “door buster” deals got better and the shoppers got more aggressive.

Shall I go on?  I thought not.

In the end, we owe this blemish on American culture to – American culture.  But, in the end, who do you think caused the problem?  These are the same people that brought you midnight infomercials and ESPN Classic.

Although sports re-runs make Gilligan’s Island look a lot better.

[i] For those of you who are unfamiliar with this riveting piece of cinema, the plot is based upon a 12 hour period when all crime is legal.  The result, of course, is that many people lose all civility – much as they do on Black Friday.  As a footnote to a footnote, it all sounds kind of like an old original “Star Trek” episode (The Return of the Archons), and I apologize for knowing that.

[ii] This is from an actually good piece of cinema, but doesn’t directly apply.  Look it up.