A lot of my
friends on Facebook are excited to proclaim their boycott of shopping for this
upcoming Thanksgiving Day. A few have
heralded stores announcing that they “value their employees families enough” to
not open on Thanksgiving Day; and others have decried the stores announcing
that they will be open for special hours and special sales. In the view of many, shopping on Thanksgiving
Day is the Enemy at work. I’m
sympathetic; I’m just not convinced.
To be fair, I am
CHOOSING not to SHOP on Thanksgiving
Day at least because I value time with my family—particularly on Thanksgiving—because
it’s my favorite holiday.
Thanksgiving is
a pretty unique witness. At a planning
meeting for our Community’s Interfaith Thanksgiving Worship Service we noted
that Thanksgiving is a U.S. Holiday—specifically set aside for offering signs
of gratitude to God. From the beginning,
this holiday was seen as being an important observance not for any of its
often-assumed Christian identity but because the original interpretation of “God”
was INCLUSIVE of all faiths—Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and
others. So that maybe the only people
who might be excluded are the atheists who believe in “no god”—and yet, so many
of them also ascribe that a time of thanksgiving is not a bad human
endeavor.
I haven’t
checked this on the internet, but I learned this week that for many years, the U.S.
Congress met intentionally on Christmas Day.
Of all the things, right? But the
point was—as someone shared in the conversation—that Congress didn’t want to be
perceived as endorsing any particular religious affiliation, or offering some
kind of “special privilege” to some but not others. In other words, Thanksgiving was a National
Holiday; Christmas was a particularly Christian holy day—it was important to
work on one but not the other.
So if the
anti-Thanksgiving-Day-shopping-hordes need another reason not to like stores
being open on Thanksgiving Day, they can call it un-patriotic and
un-American. That’s the real truth—not that
they’re stealing from someone’s family.
And I’m with you in spirit, sort-of.
But I’m sorry. As much as I’d
like to pile my angst on those greedy stores that are seeking a greater share
of financial profit by opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day—it’s just not,
and not just, their fault.
Think of it this
way; ask people today what “Thanksgiving” means to people and it won’t take
long to get to turkey and NFL football.
For many, Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving without the now-obligatory
football game (and believe me, here in the Philadelphia area, few people will
be shopping on Thanksgiving because it’s the Dallas Cowboys and the
Philadelphia Eagles playing a game that will be televised nationally—to the joy
of many and the heartburn of others!).
But no one, I mean NO ONE ever steps up to the pre-game, halftime, or
post-game microphone ritual to shame the teams or the audience about the game
being played on a national holiday or how this stole everyone’s family from
what’s important. So why are we so angry
at the Wal-Marts and the Best-Buys when they want a piece of our holiday action,
too?
Over the past few
years, as this Thanksgiving-Day-shopping-thing was coming along, the retailers
made a careful argument. Look, they
said, people don’t really like their families enough to put up with a full 8 or
12 hours of contact time. They need the
distraction of the football game, they need the meal, and then they just need
to “get out of there.” They argued that
opening late on Thanksgiving Day—in some cases—would “save families” because it
would prevent the typical family melt-down or blow up when irritations got rubbed
raw after hours of being confined in the house and around the table!
The truth is,
some people bought it—literally. Filled
with the excitement of other things to do, sure, SOME PEOPLE dumped the family
gathering for a holiday mark-down. But
instead of decrying the decision, we vilify retailers—not even think about all
the single folks, or those who couldn’t afford the ticket home, or the people
who were blessed by a day of work just to pay the bills. It’s not just the fault of the
retailers. They’ve got to make a buck;
we’re all in this together. All of us—tied
together—now more than ever.
Of course, if
stores are open a few hours on Thanksgiving and some people are going to shop. [Thank goodness, because some of us forget a
critical item on the shopping list and at the last minute we’re in line at the
grocery at 9am on Thanksgiving Day thankful that Cheri, the check-out lady, wasn’t
at home warming her turkey!] Yet still,
we think we can prevent all this by just saying, “No! You can’t open your store on Thanksgiving”—for
all that is holy and right and just and fair!
For us. As we see it.
From our own selfish perspective.
Not us, “in it together” or “tied to one another in hope.”
So we decry both
the shopping and the fact that some people have to work. But they’re working to pay the rent and put
food on the table. There are still real
needs being met by these transactions too.
We all have choices, and maybe that’s a good thing, a better thing. It’s possible for many things to be right and
true and faithful—even on a holiday. Even
with shopping.
I try not to
shop on holidays—but that’s a choice I make for myself and my family, not for
anyone else. But I don’t think I should use
it as an excuse to not like retailers or to hold it against them. If you don’t want to shop on Thanksgiving
Day, don’t. They can’t make you do it
anymore than the television can make you watch it.
For my part, I
hope to be home with my family. We’ll
probably have some turkey, we might catch some of the football game, and we
might play some catch in the yard. We,
too, will be looking at the sales in that huge-thanksgiving-bundle of papers
and thinking about what mostly other people will spend their day buying on
Friday. And then we’ll turn our
attention to all there is to celebrate and be thankful for in the next month or
two, and what it means to wait and watch and hope for the things
long-promised.
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and
Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania
