Every year American witness the Black Friday news coverage of a massive crowd of shoppers waiting at the doors of a major shopping outlet to get the best "deal" on their Christmas purchases. Who can blame them for wanting to avoid the constantly rising prices of products these days?
The second the doors are opened, the inevitable crowd crush happens and some who fall, or are pushed down, get injured, or worse yet, crushed to death.
Once inside, we often see footage of shoppers in the store pushing and shoving to get to the discount bin with some actually grabbing a box of the item out of another shopper's hands.
Why? In my mind, somehow this doesn't reflect the spirit of the holiday season. Has our modern shopping culture been so conditioned that they see the event as an annual post-Thanksgiving ritual? Why would any sane person want to subject themselves to such a situation?
Our modern suburban shopper has become so fixed on getting the latest gizmo or gift for the lowest price that many of us have completely lost the whole point of the season. It would be interesting to conduct a survey to learn just what percentage of gift givers actually make something to give for the recipient.
While cyber shopping for those deals certainly helps to alleviate one from participating in much of those scenarios, it has definitely enhance the consumer mind-set of materialism over keeping the focus of the season on the original purpose of the holiday. What, in the old days, was originally known as holy days. On top of it all, there's the misguided notion, or more likely assumption, by the cyber shopper that their action is helping to "save the planet".
After all, they're not driving to the shopping mall and increasing their "carbon footprint"; the newest label assigned to every individual of our modern culture. But, that package which comes to their doorstep is transported by a huge fleet of delivery vans. They pollute just as much as any other vehicle on the road.
What's even more disturbing to me is that, because of our incredibly diversified mobility today, many will simply purchase an item online, have it shipped to the individual in some other city or town, and it will show up on their porch to retrieve; if some porch thief doesn't spot it while they're at the office or business working first.
Today's modern Christmas holiday is focused on getting, not giving, which originated as a Christian act of generosity, emulating the three wise men from the east to present their gifts to the baby Jesus. If we are to turn around our modern culture of getting, it will only be from those individuals returning to their churches and reminding themselves of the actual reason for the season.
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