Black Thanksgiving: A Real Turkey - 2012 Edition

“CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.” ~ Ambrose Bierce.

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.” ~ Confucius

“There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”  ~ O Henry

Inching through Berkeley in rush hour traffic (Why in the hell do they call it rush hour when it takes that hour to go 5 miles? Where exactly is the rush part?) NPR brought the impending holiday season into stark blinding reality.  It reported that this year Wal-Mart will be kicking off the holiday shopping season by opening its doors at 8 PM on Thanksgiving night. 

Last year, in this very space I published a post titled Black Thanksgiving: A Real Turkey in which I criticized the marginalizing of our great American holiday, Thanksgiving, in favor of a new ritual; that of bundling up and leaving the holiday festivities for a round of bargain hunting hysteria.  I protested, vehemently I might add, the decision by Wal-Mart to open at 10 PM on Thanksgiving night.  In its audacity, Wal-Mart not only didn’t take my beef with them seriously, it upped the ante and decided to open its doors two hours earlier than last year.  The very effrontery of it all.  Obviously Walmart doesn’t know who it’s dealing with.  No, really, they don’t.  They don’t have the foggiest idea who I am and even if they did they wouldn’t care.  I’m that gnat on the ass of an elephant (or more properly the ass of an ass). Nonetheless I feel compelled to play David to Sam’s Goliath. 

The NPR report featured a Wal-Mart spokesperson saying that this is what people want.  They don’t want to get up early on Black Friday.  She made this sound like Wal-Mart is doing America some sort of favor by insinuating itself deeper into our national holiday. Bullshit. They’re opening earlier on Thanksgiving because a bunch of high level suits got together and figured that there’s two hours more worth of money to be made.  And then they were all so thrilled over a few more shekels clinking in the till that the soulless bastards all spontaneously ejaculated; good that selected underwear will be 25% off in the men’s accessories department.

Last year’s 10 PM opening was the dry run.  This year they’re taking the experiment to the next level and of course it will be a great success because so many Americans will buy into the notion that nothing says giving thanks for our bounty like joining a shopping frenzy and cold cocking a woman you’ve never met over the last video game that’s been marked down 12 bucks. And so next year I suppose we’ll see a 6 PM opening and then in 2014 another two hours and the deed will be done.  The Thanksgiving feast will be permanently fucked and the happiest beings on Earth will be turkeys; the feathered ones and the Wal-Mart suits and shareholders. But don’t despair; in your holiday shopping mailer there will certainly be a coupon for a free 64 ounce soda to go with the specially priced turkey burger and sweet potato fries combo in the store cafeteria.

Why am I griping about this?  Because we are, as my dear dad used to say, “a nation of sheep,” and some measure of proof of this can be found in a statement about this in TechNewsWorld; "Black Friday is arriving early this year, forcing some discount-hungry shoppers to choose between Walmart and pumpkin pie."  “Forcing us” – really?  We aren’t being forced but we are being seduced by businessmen pandering to our consumerist weakness.  A flock being herded dutifully by a suited shepherd who’s staff is a dollar bill.   

I’m bent about this because I remember when Thanksgiving was a holiday, a real bonafide, not a damn thing is open holiday. It was a day in which you made sure that your gas tank had enough to get you through the holiday because neighborhood gas stations were closed. Also shuttered were grocery stores but if you needed some staple items, a loaf of bread or some milk, you went to the local mom and pop liquor store.  For us, when I was a kid, it was Frank's Liquors.  Frank Lintini's little shop would would be the place to get that extra pound of butter or quart of eggnog; "oh and by the way pickup another bottle of Early Times, we're running low."  But Frank left only a small window; open at 10 and closed at 1 or 2 so that he could be with his family. 

I have a beef about this because it’s being driven largely by Wal-Mart; a horrible company that has benefited from some ridiculous folklore that it's a great American institution.  I suppose that would be true if the American way means; being a merciless predator, paying your employees a pittance for the “opportunity” of being treated like crap, maintaining a ridiculously low glass ceiling and telling American manufacturers to go to Hell while being one of The People’s Republic of China’s major customers (bigger than some countries).  And now they’ve decided to dump on their employees a bit more by rousting them from their Thanksgiving tables. The wife and I have been talking about getting a new TV this year and I’ll bet Wal-Mart would have a great price but I’ll be dipped in shit before I consider buying at Wal-Mart and I’ll be double dipped before I would go on Thanksgiving. 

What truly saddens me is that as individuals and as a society we love Thanksgiving; we cherish it probably more than any of our other holiday.  Our hearts are warmed by the classic Rockwell painting of family gathered at the table.  My own memories include the anticipation of the big day, going shopping with mom for the feast, watching her preparations of chopping and dicing: roasting and baking.  Cora and I have hosted Thanksgiving for over twenty years.  Sometimes it’s been the small immediate family but most times it’s an extended group with family, friends and those that Cora calls orphans; the ones from work separated from family by distance and no place else to go on this familial day.  My kids would come home and ask if I’d got the turkey and then open the fridge to marvel at the size and then the questions would start; what time is dinner?; who’s coming over?; what kind of stuffing are you making this year?; what else are we having? And then there’s the day; up at the crack of dawn to bake pies and cornbread for stuffing, turn on the Thanksgiving Day parade (until the first football game of the day), housecleaning, table setting; a home filled with the smells of roasting turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and pies and warmed by an overworked oven and the gathering of those close to us.  Throw a football around at halftime?  There’s a din in the house; various conversations, the clattering of cookware and dishes, the shouts of touchdown on the television and crying grandchildren.  People are meeting; some after a few days, others after a month or two; some haven’t talked since the previous year and some are meeting for the first time; handshakes, hugs and “how’s it going?”  “Can I get you something to drink?”  The first year that my daughter missed Thanksgiving at our home she called to greet us and she cried.  It’s not perfect; something gets burned, the turkey might be dry, the football game might be dreadful and maybe someone has a little too much holiday hooch.  Yet for some reason many of us decide to pull ourselves away to go shopping.  And granted it’s your choice but it supports a sad, ever-growing system that compels those who would rather not work to go out and serve the manic masses.  I might be more open to this travesty if the suits that thought it up were the ones manning the battlements and the registers but they’ve likely no more skill at running a register than they have empathy for the people who toil to make them their fortunes.   

I suppose that if this is the way we want to do it then let’s just stop pretending and go all in.  Let’s make every holiday a celebration of money; adorn the Christmas Tree with plastic bills of every denomination; instead of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus at Easter we can celebrate the latest stock market recovery; green fireworks displays in lieu of the red, white and blue on the Fourth of July.  I propose a new holiday; National Business Day in which everyone goes to work and toils thanklessly for 10 miserable, fucking hours in order to enrich a stiff, cold, stone-hearted empty suit; then we slog through traffic to arrive home and kiss the front stoop in relief - wait, that’s what we do every day.  We could replace Lady Liberty with a big statue of Sam Walton holding a wad of cash in one hand and a piece of rubber dog shit made in China in the other; Sam is standing over a Chinese worker stooped over a sewing machine.  And please replace that “Give me your tired, your poor..” nonsense with a simple, short, “Give me your money,” because as we all know, time is money. 

What else saddens me about this?  It’s a fait accompli; a done deal. We’re on a road on which there is no turning back.  The tune is played by the Chamber of Commerce and society dances like trained monkeys.  The networks of business tell us what’s good for the nation and what isn’t and it’s all based on the greenback.  In 1776 this great nation began with a revolution against tyranny; the tyranny of royalty.  Today we’re ruled by a new tyranny; a two headed tyranny of money and business.   

Ah, fuck it all.  Just find me some small town without a Wal-Mart, or a McDonalds; where you get your cuppa Joe in a stoneware mug from a guy named Joe and not in a paper cup emblazoned with phony sentiment dreamt up by a PR jerk from a multinational corporation; where shopping is friendly and not frenzied and where on Thanksgiving you could fire a cannon down Main Street and not hit a thing.  I’m just banging my head against a wall made of golden bricks aren’t I? 

What the hell, we all make our own traditions.  Here is what I’ll be thankful for; that my children resist that temptation to go shopping on Thanksgiving and that they begin to create for their children the kinds of Thanksgiving memories that they cherish from their own childhoods.  Memories and traditions last so much longer than the Crock Pot you saved 15 bucks on.  And that 15 bucks?  Do you even remember what you did with it?