Shop 'Til You're Shot

Well, yet another Thanksgiving and Day After Thanksgiving has come and gone, and once again, I have successfully avoided purchasing a damn thing on either of those two days. Two days, you ask? Yep, retailers have started opening on Thanksgiving night in order to satisfy the uncontrollable needs of people who must spend their money on high-priced toys and consumer electronics at the first available moment.

Now, my belief that the true meaning of Christmas -- namely, the celebration of the birth of our lord and savior Jesus Christ -- has been distorted into a mass-market-driven retail gorge-fest is another topic for another time. But still, I fail to understand why people are so willing to jump through ridiculous hoops in order to sacrifice oodles of hard-earned cash at the altar of the corporate gods. Each year, the brainwashed masses queue up at ungodly wee hours of the morning outside of big box department stores, counting down the hours until they are permitted to shop. Of course, decorum waits for no door-buster sale, so we are treated to the usual plenitude of news stories about people being trampled or punched or shot in the mad dash for savings. I assure that each time one of those stories airs, the corporate fat cats in the boardrooms are high-fiving each other and patting themselves on the back for successfully whipping the masses into a post-Thanksgiving frenzy yet another year, thus padding their bottom line. People, think about this -- you are beating each other up for the right to give your money away.

I take no part in these traditions. Making it easy is the fact that I do not celebrate Christmas. Whenever possible, I elevate myself above the fray by avoiding the malls if at all possible between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I do reluctantly participate in the gift exchange that has been unfortunately co-opted into our holiday of Hanukkah, but see it as a necessary evil that I must begrudgingly tolerate as a cost of living in today's society. Every three or four years, our holiday falls at such a time that I can off and shop before or after the frenzy begins, and thank goodness.

People, you do realize that the mall is open the other eleven months of the year, right? There are other sales as well. Maybe not all are quite as amazing as the post-Thanksgiving doorbusters. I don't know -- I don't keep track. But what I do know is that my sanity and dignity are worth far more than a discounted plasma-screen TV. I only wish more people would feel the same way.