The extravagance, the prodigality, of it all is, for me at least, tawdry and dispiriting. Jim Wallis writes on his blog that:
The pressure we feel [to buy] doesn’t just come from the ads we get in our inboxes or see on television. All of us have family and friends who are going to be doing a lot of shopping. If a friend goes out and spends money on us, we feel guilty if we don’t reciprocate at roughly the same level. What’s worse is if someone gets us a gift and we don’t get them anything at all. The problem is not giving gifts. Giving gifts becomes a problem when the exchange of stuff replaces building relationships.It also becomes a problem because we become preoccupied with material excess and often lose sight of why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. The day is simply the climax of an orgy of splurge shopping at malls which create their idea of an appropriately seasonal atmosphere by piping in music like Alvin and the Chipmunks and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Everywhere we turn we're encouraged to shop till we drop. We're like a person being urged to sample not just one piece of chocolate in the box, but to plunge ahead and consume the whole thing. As we work through the selections the sweets cloy and after a while they just make us sick.
My crotchety outlook on Black Friday notwithstanding, I have mixed feelings about the rite. The jobs of millions of people depend upon us wasting money today on things nobody really wants or needs. If people were to turn Black Friday into a buy-nothing-day it'd cause an enormous amount of hardship for those businesses and their employees who rely on our profligacy for their livelihoods.
Even so, I'm a non-combatant conscientious objector to the spectacle. Maybe there's a better way. Perhaps some of us could put a little perspective and meaning back into the Christmas season by sending a note to family members, friends, and co-workers, who are often stressed over trying to find a gift for someone who already has more than enough of life's goods, asking that no presents (or at least not as many presents) be bought for us this year, and that in lieu of the gift a donation be sent to a charity of our choosing. Perhaps the address of the charity could be appended to the note.
This would not only help avoid the embarrassment of being showered with items for which one has no need and can't use, but it would also be a gift to our loved ones inasmuch as it would take the pressure off them to come up with something meaningful to give us.
At our Christmas gatherings they might hand us a card saying that a gift has been donated in our name to the charity we requested. For some of us that would be the most wonderful gift we could receive, and it would be a step toward recovering, at least in our own circles, the original spirit and meaning of Christmas day.
