When I think of Thanksgiving, I usually think of getting together with my family, eating tons and tons of food and sleeping it all off at the end of the day. Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate family friendship and all the blessing we have been giving in this life. The whole slaughtering of innocent Native Americans and stealing their land is a also on my mind as well.
But none of this is really what businesses want us to think about. Halloween ended a short few weeks ago and Thanksgiving is a week away, but most retail stores have not let those two holidays stand in their way of reminding you that Christmas is on its way. They aren’t reminding us about the need to remember the savior and celebrate his birth. No. They want to remind us that we need to buy presents for everyone. We need to spend cash and lots of it. Not for some greater good of society but to line the pockets of investors in a down economy.
For many many years we have lived with a plague that hits us every year at Thanksgiving time. No it isn’t flu season. No it is a disease called “Black Friday”. This day, the Friday following Thanksgiving, is when most retail stores hold some of their biggest sales of the year. They pull out all the stops in the rush to sell as much junk as possible in the run up to Christmas. (more…)