i don't buy anything on thanksgiving or black friday. not in stores, not online. i reserve these two days for the NOT BUYING OF ANYTHING.
i recommend you do, too.
why?
because we have to stop enabling this nonsense.
we have to stop enabling the commercial culture that equates thing buying with being smart, being loved, and being acceptable to our loved ones.
more and more our commercial culture takes family holidays (whether you keep a birth family or a chosen family) and makes them into a death spiral of consumption, competition, unreasonable expectations and- get this- thanksgiving shopping and black friday shopping TAKE US AWAY from our families and our meals in favor of buying stuff we largely don't need.
think: we have an economic model based on exploiting the NEED of the middle and lower classes.
think: we have a culture that promises if we only spend MORE, we will feel secure.
think: maybe you DO enjoy competitive crowded shopping, but maybe your kids / spouse / relatives / friends would like to just sit down with you and enjoy your company.
think: some person, probably working for low wages and hovering near poverty, is now required to go to work whether s/he wants to or not on one of the few remaining days that was left to them.
did you really need to go shopping on thanksgiving? do you suspect there won't be BIG SALES later?
but those stores will be open as long as we keep showing up. those businesses will exploit your fears and their workers as long as we make it profitable.
so i don't buy anything on thanksgiving. not gas, not groceries, even if i run out of toilet paper. and i don't go black friday shopping. i suggest that you don't either.
5 comments:
Black Friday makes me sick. The thought of stores being open ON THANKSGIVING NIGHT makes me furious. And sick.
There are moments when I consider that running off to a remote cabin to avoid some of the grosser realities of the modern age would be preferable to lone dissent. My husband has more of those moments than I do, and it's usually me reminding him that it would be more beneficial to our kids to teach them how to live in the modern world and yet not necessarily be consumed by it. But Black Friday is a remote cabin moment for me. Ugh.
This is such an excellent post. The thing that has always bothered me the very most about Black Friday and its creep over into Thanksgiving day itself (and of course, it's on your list, too) is the retail workers having to be there, instead of getting some needed and deserved time off from the hard job they do daily.
I hate all this b.s. I am with you. I buy nothing and love every minute of it.
Last year I saw this fridge we wanted go on sale on Black Friday. We were not about to go out and shop on Thanksgiving or the day after. Guess what? It was on sale again for same price after Thanksgiving. No one was in the store and it wasn't a holiday. :-)
Hear, hear! I will occasionally shop on Small Business Saturday but mostly I want to avoid rampant consumerism throughout the holiday season.
Right with you. Although we do make a grocery exception, especially since we don't do a meal today with sufficient leftovers. We won't be in malls/large stores until after the Shopping Season is done.
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