Black Friday is synonymous with gigantic televisions, the
latest gaming systems, Tickle-Me-Elmo's, long lines, trampling people, and mass
hysteria. This is the most hyped
shopping day of the year. This is a
highlighted day for owners, workers, and shoppers alike as it kicks off the Christmas
shopping season. Millions of people scrounging
for deals to wrap in elaborate boxes and place under artificially lit trees. No one is excluded from the commercial
chaos. I once worked for a Christian retailer
who once lectured me about this day and season was about making money (silly me
thinking it was about a birth).
It's a day we throw away our money, our common sense, and
our common courtesy. It is a day of the
survival of the fittest. The weak are
trampled, the slow are left behind, and the broke are imprisoned behind
scanners for 16 hours straight with the promise of longer hours to come during
the "most wonderful time of the year."
Is it not bad enough Black Friday comes hours after we
celebrate being thankful for what we have?
Now stores are opening sooner. Not
just 3:00 am Friday morning, but now even 8:00 pm on Thursday night. Now families who had to work on little sleep
after Thanksgiving will not be able to have any Thanksgiving at all. Thanksgiving will soon be a holiday reserved
for the wealthy who are not forced to work customer service jobs. Have we all
gone crazy?
Wal-Mart, our nation's largest employer, is following
suite. Wal-Mart already has a terrible
record with managing its employees. They
already have unlivable wages, scarce access to health care, and discrimination
lawsuits enough to backlog the courts for several years. Their record on the environment is reckless,
and their concern for local business is nonexistent. Now Wal-Mart is opening on Thanksgiving "for
their customers." It is not enough
to steal employees from their beds in the wee hours following Thanksgiving, now
they are stealing them away from the dinner table so that they can provide our
country with things we do not need.
Black Friday has moved over to Black Thursday, and it seems
that the darkness is spreading.
The truth is we don't need a Black Thursday, and we don't
need a Black Friday, what we need is a Good Friday, a Friday where work is not
done through shopping malls and super-stores, but where work is done by God
himself mending our hearts, our families, our nation, and our world. We need days of Sabbaths, to remember God's
work for us. We do not need to jump
start our economy, or get a head start on our shopping, we do not need to grab
tents and wait in line, we need to gather together around the table and wait
for the Lord.
There are people who have had enough. Wal-Mart employees have already started
walking out. People have signed
petitions and made promises not to shop on Thanksgiving or Black Friday for the
employee's sake. This all gets me
excited and hopeful.
The truth is if we continue to head down the path over manic
materialism we will not have to worry about any fiscal cliff, because we will
have already fallen so far there will be no else further to go.
Not that shopping is wrong in itself. But let us be honest, haven't we gone so far
overboard that it has become downright unhealthy, disturbing, and just plain
wrong?
I would not dream of
asking employees to stay home, that would be unfair, but I am asking employers
to close their shops and trust in the Lord, I am asking shoppers to stay home
and "give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in
Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Please let us stay home, let us be thankful, and let us enjoy a Sabbath
rest.
