Bah Humbug to Black Friday

While googling “Boycott Black Friday” to learn why others feel the way I do about the dreaded day after Thanksgiving – when patriotic Americans line up outside department stores in the dark and get funneled inside like cattle heading to slaughter so they can spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need because the items have been marked down REPRESENTING HUGE SAVINGS FOR THE CONSUMER – I ran across an editorial in the Baltimore Sun that touched upon why I’m boycotting the big event:

Unemployment is high, national debt is mounting and the government appears utterly incapable of doing anything productive. The Middle East is roiled, Europe is teetering on the brink of financial collapse, and China is beefing up its military. But the real threat to America may be this: Toys "R" Us is opening at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Wal-Mart stores will open at 10 (two hours earlier than last year), and Target, Macy's, Kohl’s, Best Buy and others will open at midnight. Is nothing sacred?

It struck me as wrong when we were told back in the last quarter of 2001 to forget about fallen towers and dead human beings, to just go on with our lives and stimulate the economy. And it strikes me as wrong today, a decade later, when so many are suffering, sacrificing, camping in the street and rinsing pepper spray from their eyes, to stick our collective fingers in our collective ears and head to the Big Box superstore – the one that drove Mom and Pop out of business with Chinese imports, slave wages and tax abatements – to snag another multipack of toilet paper and a discounted plasma TV that we don’t even need.

I understand "Black Friday" – which some believe was so named because it marks the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit or are "in the black" – has become important to retailers. (Some are reportedly so dependent on the holiday shopping season that the fourth quarter produces all the year’s profits and compensates for losses incurred in the other three quarters.) What I don’t understand is why it’s become necessary to forego sleep and congregate in front of retail establishments with strangers, counting the minutes until we’re admitted inside so we can pay less for merchandise that the 1% hopes we won’t do without.

I’ve participated in Black Friday. I’ve fought over parking spaces in the wee hours and saved spots in line for people who thought they could hold it until they were allowed inside by crabby rent-a-cops but found they were wrong. I’ve waited with hundreds of other groggy, unkempt shoppers in massive crowds so that I could hand over my money to harried cashiers too busy to make eye contact and too stressed to smile, pleased that the contents of my overflowing shopping cart would soon be stuffed into the minivan, headed for the walk-in closet that serves for a few weeks every year as a holding room for items that will find their way under the dead tree we’ll erect in our living room and adorn with blinking lights. I’ve ignored the gnawing feeling that consumerism is wrong, that conspicuous consumption of unneeded objects is obscene at a time when children are starving, people lack jobs and health care and the planet’s finite resources are fast depleting.

I can’t do it anymore.

I can’t support retail outlets that underpay and overwork their employees just because my kids think they need presents and the more the better. I can’t continue to betray my principles and put more money in the pockets of the same greedy Fat Cats who drink champagne on Wall Street balconies and laugh at protesters, mocking the misery of the poor, the unemployed, the least among us.

I’ll try to convince my loved ones to buy less, buy local, and be more grateful for all that we already have. I’ll try to persuade my mate and our kids that there are plenty of days to shop, plenty of steals and deals to be had, lots of opportunities to have fun spending money without acting like mindless sheep hypnotized into submission by brightly-colored advertisements and “Black Friday” coupon books.

Did you know that people have been seriously injured and assaulted by fellow shoppers on Black Friday, and that a 34-year-old Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in 2008 when the doors opened at a store in Valley Stream, New York? (The term “Black Friday” has taken on new meaning for his family.) I like a good deal as much as the next guy, but sheesh. I think I’ll declare a different day as the official start of the holiday shopping season. Like maybe April 1.

A California mall on Black Friday in 2006

Source: Baltimore Sun.