The Story
Merry Consumerism
At midnight on Friday, the 23rd of November, despite the rampant heroin/meth related crimes of Baltimore City, hundreds gather in front of the glistening Circuit City, their collective bellies full, metabolism keeping them warm against the cold fall night as they clutch their families’ wish lists.
Hark! An Angel at the door, it’s four in the morning a red polo’d teen unlocks the digitized sliding doors, and they all roll in - because it’s the day after Thanksgiving, it’s Black Friday. The ancient ritual, where sacrifices of time, money and patience are made to recognize a time when we got in this mess of high credit spending in order to ward of the demons of consumerism and market collapse.
I’m no far-leftist or far-rightist who fears money for whichever reasons, it in the hands of the right or wrong people, blah blah blah. I don’t claim to be a socialist, liberalist, conservationist, conservatist, pervertist, monastic. I embrace the holiday cheer. I’m a celebrationist.
Be it the Holy Spirit (Ghost?), Hebrew-top, re-runs of A Christmas Story, Kwanzaa jokes I love it.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Holiday (I mean Christmas here) Season, let me inform you how it pans out.
As customary, the Holiday season begins when the Coca-Cola Company Groundhog pulls out of it’s cubicle and, scared of the looming fourth quarter’s shadow, it retires to the underbelly of marketing, where it kicks off the dirt on the current year’s Holiday Can Design (this year is 2007).
This particular year, Coke Holiday Cans declared Christmas starting somewhere in the first week of November. Any global business worth its weight in child slavery knows to cast away Thanksgiving décor (who cares for it anyway) and hang tinsel, Styrofoam snowflakes, red and white and (why not) some blue too.
Like a fake aluminum Holiday tree on fire, the hype spreads from the roots to the tip, to every branch, to every obscure elementary school ornament. At a pagan-hippie-Organic food market, a vegan watches another man carry off the last crate of soy eggnog (a crate carries approximately 16 gallon cartons of this concoction). To the concerned cashier, the man mad with milk-substitute screams, “they only make this once a year!”
These people exist. They freeze it in their basement. They thaw it when they are lonely. They cast it in bronze and they have a special fixture above their marble fireplaces.
And yes, the craze continues, to madness (as pessimists say), but its all free entertainment.
Ask any of those housewives generating that line, the fateful Black Friday night in front of Circuit City, or anywhere, and all across America -- ask them if they are sad.
No, is the response. After endless hours cooking, baking, microwaving, serving, carving, boning, baking and turkey, waking up at odd hours to shop brings back memories of the golden years spent at college.
And is the vegan or the crate buyer of eggnog unhappy? Nope.
“In this day and age” (I use quotes here because nationwide every college newspaper writer uses this archaic cliché), everything is desensitized, especially fun.
So what if Holiday Cheer now is some cross breed of insomnia and binge shopping? Everyone needs a little joy, be it displayed through your drunk out-of-work uncle or your Wii-brained sister. We all need a little madness.
Happy Holidays.
Daniel Wolfe is a staff columnist for The DSJ. His views do not necessarily represent those of the entire staff.