A Case Of Capitalistic Leapfrog: My War On All Things Black Friday

     I have an unique proposal:  Let's eliminate the holiday called Thanksgiving.
     Yeah, yeah.  But I'm actually partially serious.

     It's already basically the National Speed Bump Holiday.  Now, we can't even wait for it to pass before the stores fly open their doors to begin hawking their wares to an eager public.  The turkey has barely settled and people can't wait to go trample senior citizens to get to an on-sale TV?  If you step over a fallen member of the Greatest Generation to get back to electronics before your neighbor gets there then you are a painfully disgusting human being.

     I'd suggest changing the date of Thanksgiving to say a week earlier but since that would be shredding a precedent set by President Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War no less, I'll pass.  Not that it would matter to a great many Americans, since saving a bunch on stuff that'll one day end up in the landfill is more important than keeping sacred a day to remember and be thankful for the things we already have and not the things that we do not yet have.  There's a crazy logic at work here.
     We are now engaged (paraphrasing the aforementioned Lincoln) in a great game of capitalistic leapfrog.  Merchants once opened at "normal" hours on "Black Friday" but soon it was five or six in the morning of that day, then three or four and soon at the stroke of midnight.  Now stores - most notably Wal-Mart - opened at 8:00 pm on Thanksgiving day to get a jump on things; their employees, having to give up their holiday, are understandably upset.  This, in turn, lead some other stores to do the same this year and that will increase in number in the years to come.  Where does it end?
     Equally as guilty as the stores in this madness are the consumers.  One can hardly entirely blame merchants for - gasp! - making it easier to take people's money.  The other day I heard a woman interviewed who said she wanted "more flexible" hours to do holiday shopping. More flexible than what?  They're already erasing Thanksgiving hour by hour.  A person can buy online 24/7 and can literally stand in the middle of their backyard with iphone in hand and get a deal on bath towels.  How much easier and around the clock can it get?
     Another thing:  They call it Black Friday because that's the day that stores hope to have enough sales to go into "the black" financially for the year.  If merchants both big and small depend on one day for their short and long term survival, one has to wonder what kind of shaky house of cards the entire system of ours really is.  It's probably damn shaky.
     As for me, I'll never participate in Black Friday.  I just think that it's this microcosm - and if that monstrosity has it's way, a macrocosm - that describes, shows, and brings out the worst in us.  On one day, we fight our fellow humans over temporary things; shove them out of the way for fleeting pleasure; and form into mobs, disrespect authority, step on the weak, and what might be the biggest sin of all, we find it all perfectly socially acceptable.  And then for the next month or so, we all sing about peace on earth and good will towards our fellow man in some sort of economic self-cleansing.
     So the people who maced the security guards will - if they have any decency left - feel guilty for a bit, I suppose.  But when the demons come in the night carrying the memories of fighting one's brother or sister for material posessions, they'll have the comfort of knowing they can flip on the flat screen to help make all those inconvenient things go far, far away.
     Me?  I'm staying home.