There is nothing like starting off the holiday season with a little mace-to-the-face. Which was the case for one highly unsatisfied customer already this year. I remember being taught something in school, about the day after Thanksgiving being called “Black Friday” because it is the day that many merchant’s annual sales tallies go from “in the black” to “in the red”. However, because of two other highly unsatisfied and also injured customers, who were shot when they came under gunfire on this day while attempting to purchase goods – I think Black Friday now should be called “Stay-the-Hell-Home-Friday.”

Upon hearing news of these attacks, I kept imagining someone from another culture on planet earth, that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, or Kwanza wondering what those desperate people must have been shopping for to subject themselves to such danger. Food? Clean water? Blankets? Medicine?

“No. Flat screen TV’s. DVD players. And children’s plastic toys.”

I worry that as a society we are falling victim to the unending marketing campaign to make us all run pell-mell for products that have been available all year long and will still be available in January, sometimes for even cheaper prices than December. The commercials, circulars and billboard ads are definitely working, as consumers are literally attacking each other for goods – in November – not just for a discount but also because “Time is Running Out!”

As if anyone could run out of time in a holiday season that now lasts at least seven weeks – from mid November till January 1st – all ripe with big banner sale days. Remember when homeowners used to put up “Christmas lights” in mid-December, and leave them till the second week of January? The lights were a dramatization of a biblical story point – that the three wise men found baby Jesus because of the North Star’s brightness. Now the lights seem more like runway lighting, showing us the most direct route to a shopping mall.

I also find it concerning that in the major cities of America, shopping malls are the most festive place to spend pre-Christmas days. Their holiday trees are much taller and brighter than any church I’ve seen. Could that possibly be because there are more religious employees at the mall petitioning for this? Or is it more likely that the corporations who make that barely-taxed fortune off the 96% are trying to lure families to write their wish lists in front of their store windows?

These bright lights leading to the Mecca of consumerization are also just the beginning, after arrival at the holy place of shopping. Once inside the pearly parking lot gates, the holiday season is also denoted by seasonal flavors of coffee at Starbucks and new CD’s to buy at the counter. Call me a curmudgeon but although I see the five signs for those seasonal drinks – that I pray-tell don’t want to miss out on over the next two months because a peppermint mocha really is the perfect representation of what family time at year’s end means to me – I only go to coffee shops for coffee-flavored-coffee. And I don’t need it packaged with seven other reindeer flavors. And my holiday season will be complete without a former gang-banger-now-rapper’s new holiday CD set with my beverage.

I begrudgingly started my families holiday season yesterday, when we went to buy a Christmas tree at what my toddlers called a “Christmas Forest” (which was really a well-decorated parking lot). Feeling all this internal push to buy and spend for a one-day holiday that I no longer make religious in anyway, I finally began to worry about the trees, too. The attendant told me these trees are grown solely for this reason, so that while they are standing the trade actually helps the earth rather than hurts it. Feeling some relief that all isn’t going to hell just because I’m buying in, my husband and I lugged a small tree into our car… and then headed over to the mall, for pictures with Santa. My little ones were madly impressed by the 100-foot tree there, and all the lights and even the flying reindeer. We then let them tell us what they want and as gifts this year from all the store windows. And as we begin to spend all the money we will calmly, and thoughtfully put into the economy at years end also, I am desperately hoping it will help our corner of earth rather than hurt it, too.

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