Tag: Black Friday

Celebrating Thanksgiving but not Black Friday

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn happy holidays

“Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvest it. We cook the harvest. It wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be eating it if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog-bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you Lord just the same for the food we’re about to eat, amen.” – Jimmy Stewart as Charlie Anderson in “Shenandoah.”

Everyone was dressed in the wrong clothes and the table wasn’t there.

Sad to say, a lot of people think like Charlie Anderson in the 1965 film and don’t know who or what to thank on this day.  Thanksgiving is a harvest festival that might have been first celebrated in 1621 by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation.  The idea still seems fine even though most of us have little to do with the production of crops and see the day as a time spent with family.

Black Friday casts a pall over the holiday because it traditionally marks the Christman shopping season where we all rush out and buy what nobody really wants other than to brag we got it cheap. Every major holiday is sulled up by turning into a commercial farce.

This is a sad Thanksgiving for my wife and me because we normally visit my daughter, her husband, and my two granddaughters on Thanksgiving, but illness is keeping us away.

In many ways, Thanksgiving bothers me because–assuming the first celebration happened as history and legend tell us, the hope and thanks of those days turned into a nightmare for the country’s indigenous people that is still going on today. So, the first Thanksgiving is rather like going over to some new friends’ house and then killing them after dinner and stealing the house.

But never mind that since most of us have spent many memorable days with family and friends eating a wonderful meal (not counting family members we normally try to avoid), and eating until the football games begin and we fall asleep on first and goal.

Mother often noted when my two brothers and I were growing up, that the meal took hours to make, fifteen minutes to eat, and another hour for cleaning up the kitchen. I still like the turkey drumstick best in spite of the bones in it. And as far as I know, I’ve never touched Stove Top Stuffing. My wife and I make our own and it’s do much better than the mysterious stuff that comes out of a box.

But, I digress. I hope we remember what this holiday celebrates.

–Malcolm

Rumours About Christmas

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Christmas, writing2 Comments

Got a tip from a reasonably informed source: “The Christmas people are at it again.”

Even though it was March, I drove downtown in my 1950 A4 Checker (for you young people, that’s a car, not an Internet fact checker) in a cold wind that raged drunkenly beneath black clouds that looked like they’d been painted onto a frightening sky by Salvador Dalí during one of his less-lucid moments.

Arrived at the Max Value Department Store at high noon, heard a clock ticking, saw a used-up department store Santa singing “Do not forsake me oh my darling.” He waived as though we were the same kind of people even though we aren’t.

There was a line of Christman trees with bright burning candles in the store window (actually behind the window) hovering over a pile of brown pine needles, crumpled tinsel, last year’s gifts, and last year’s dreams.

I waited until September and drove downtown again, saw that Max Value had burnt to the ground, demonstrating the danger of placing candles on Christmas trees. Nearby stores that hadn’t burnt down yet due to the vicissitudes of mob looting that is no longer a crime in most cities, already had factory-fresh trees and garlands, ribbons and bows, stacks of toys I’d never heard of, and signs that proclaimed, “To Hell With Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving, we’re merrily geared up for Christmas.”

I felt lower than Jimmy Hoffa at the bottom of the river with concrete shoes.

Skipping Hallowe’en was fine with me because I think the holiday is meant for dead people. But Thanksgiving. Ignoring that day is a crime in enlighted cities that feature skies painted by Thomas Kinkade. My town was still stuck with Dalí skies, Piccasso streets, and Picasso people that had eyes in all the wrong places. It was obvious to me why nobody cared about Hallowe’en or Thanksgiving: the world was filled with people who can’t see straight or who are blind or who escaped from an asylum.

I walked up to a store manager and said, “It’s not even Black Friday yet.” He laughed like that evil doll in a movie I wish I’d never seen and said “Corporate Calls the shots. Next year, we’re putting up our Christmas displays during the dog days of August.” “I assume there’s a discount for the fleas,” I said. “Hardly. Folks give them to their cat-loving friends as gag gifts.”

I left before I got angry enough to kill him.

The clean-cut Santa standing outside the main door was so fat, I decided he was already eating turkey. When I got home, I heated up a roast turkey TV dinner, thankful that everyone who knows me won’t accept any cards or gifts from me because “I’m out of touch” and proud of it.

Jock Stewart

Special Investigative Reporter

Had to mortgage the house to pay off the maxed out credit cards so I could do more shopping

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life

When we were children, people we didn’t know came into our bedrooms at night and brainwashed us to believe in a deep state kind of way that it’s patriotic to overeat on Thanksgiving and overspend on Black Friday.

Wikipedia Photo

I don’t know what I bought today because I was on the run most of the time from rabid shoppers who kept trying to yank my latest deal out my hands before I got into the stolen armored car I was driving today. I seem to have a garage full of electronic equipment that will enrich my life along with the lives of the store owners and the corporate CEOs. It’s been a long day. It continues to be a long day because I’m writing this post from the lobby of a bank where I just cashed out a stack of I Bonds to make sure I had funds left for a stop at Quik Trip on the way home.

You probably have similar stories to tell, stories you’ll pass down to your children and grandchildren about the importance of buying lots of stuff. Nobody has even explained why we need the stuff, only that we need to buy it. If you leave it in the box it came in, your grandchildren can sell it for big bucks on Antiques Road Show 75 years from now. They (your grandchildren) will either think you were totally insane or the cat’s pajamas when they get the cash.

If the fates are with them (your grandchildren), that cash will be enough for ten or fifteen Black Friday’s worth of shopping to continue the tradition.  By then, people will probably be buying by rote without realizing how patriotic shopping was when the tradition started back in the 1950s.

I don’t mean to sound cynical about all this.

—Malcolm