Archive for December 11th, 2008

‘Tis the Season….

Thursday, December 11th, 2008

When I was a kid, Christmas seemed like such a magical time of year.  Everyone seemed happy, people were buying me expensive toys (I think I got the entire Kenner Star Wars collection spread out over a few years between Christmas and birthdays) and I got a lot of time off from school.  Not bad, huh?  All because this guy named Jesus was apparently born that time of year.

As I got older, Christmas seemed to be becoming less and less about goodwill toward men, happiness, Jesus and all that I had been raised to believe it was about.  It started to be more about retail, money, buying things at discounts and showing people you cared about them by showering them with money and material things!  Family members that all but ignore each other year round were coming together, putting on a fake smile and pretending to actually care about each other for one day.

During the Holiday season you also see people being – drum roll – kind to strangers.  The homeless make out pretty well, as do the people we encounter on a professional basis.  Your doorman, your mailman, the guy who sells you your newspaper every morning all get tips above and beyond what they’d normally get year round.  We spend all year taking these people for granted but on the Holidays we pretend we care about them and their families just because it makes us feel better to do so.  Where’s all of that good will toward our fellow man the rest of the year?

Which brings me to the events of this year’s Black Friday.  Yes, the day after Thanksgiving when the greedy masses of Americans invade retail chains all across the country.   Heavily discounted merchandise inspires people to line up in front of stores as early as 2am, waiting for the gates to open and the race for cheap electronics and toys to commence.

This year, at a Long Island Wal-Mart a mass of people filled with the Holiday spirit broke down the doors and a stampede into the store killed a young employee by the name of Jdimytai Damour, who was just there to do his job.  He was instructed to let the crazed holiday shoppers in once the store opened, but they couldn’t wait for that.  They had to get IN.  They had to get their discounted Xbox and Playstation accessiories.  They had to break the doors down and trample this poor man to death.  In their efforts to give their family a Merry (and heavily discounted) Christmas, they deprived this man and his family of theirs.

The customers rushed into the store, trampling him not even giving any thought to the people around them, or the condition of this poor man who took his last breaths on the floor next to the pop machines.  They needed to get their discount TVs!  They needed the discount Malibu Barbie Dream House!  It didn’t matter that they had to kill a man in the process.

Is this what the Holidays are?  Christmas is now a holiday dedicated to greed and materialism.  It’s the season where we prove over and over again just what a shallow, materialistic culture we truly are.

I don’t know how you plan on spending this Holiday season, but I know where I’ll be.  On my couch, away from the insanity, watching bad horror films and knowing that what’s happening outside my front door is much worse than what I’m seeing on my TV screen.