Sodden Holiday Thoughts

We’re approaching that holiday time of the year once again.  Actually if you believe corporate it’s been holiday season since sometime around Labor Day.  Time to buy the little woman a Lexus or a Mercedes to go with the thousand dollar bauble from Zale’s.  Break out the camping gear because Black Friday is a-comin’ and you gotta blow off a couple weeks of PTO so that you can save a hundred bucks on a TV.  Every year about this time I try to come up with some holiday theme.  It gets a little harder every year and I was despairing a bit until Starbucks dropped a big present under the tree and a self-styled evangelist put a giant bow on it.

But before we get to the nuts-a-rama there has been something of a Christmas miracle.  Black Thanksgiving, that odious and overtly greedy practice of starting the holiday shopping season ON Thanksgiving day, seems to have taken a hit.  A fair amount of large retailers have announced that they will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, including, Babies R Us, Barnes and Noble, Cabelas, Ikea, Joann, Lowes, Nordstrom, Pier 1, Petco, REI, Sam’s Club, Staples and TJ Maxx.  REI has gone a step further and is closing on black Friday and paying their employees to go out and do something outdoorsy.  There are still far too many retailers that would rather see their employees stock shelves and cater to consumerist America than allow them to play touch football on the street, have turkey dinner with the fam and maybe drink a bit too much brandy.  The sick joke is that at some point during the year some big giant head in an empty suit running one of these companies will have a good laugh with fellow big giant heads after telling the minions the myth that “the most valuable company asset is the employee.”  But it does look like public backlash is having some effect.  Next time you’re in Target tell the store manager that you’ll “be shopping elsewhere this holiday season because your corporate policy sucks.”

For its part, Wal-Mart is changing its black Friday menu; the door busters are gone.  Well sort of.  The store that supposedly reveres American values will be open on Thanksgiving purveying all of their made in China wares.  They’ll still have the advertised deals but the specially priced merchandise will be available all day and online.  According to Wal-Mart the move is being done to “make shopping easier for our customers," Wal-Mart’s Chief Merchandising Officer Steve Bratspies said to USA Today. "It’s about deals, it’s about availability and it’s about simplicity."  That of course is public relations speak (aka patent bullshit) for, it’s about corporate getting sensitive to the bad publicity of stampedes that make the evening news. I dunno, I think it’s a little disappointing.  What are we coming to when a retailer keeps enough inventory to last the entire black Friday?  It detracts from the holiday shopping experience.  Now there’s no need to pitch a tent on a sidewalk in front of Wal-Mart on November 1^st.  No more communing with the great outdoors of an empty parking lot.  No hunting for your food and provisions at Wendy’s or KFC.  No waking up at the crack of dawn to the screeching tones of a commercial parking lot sweeper and the smell of Egg McMuffins at the McDonalds up the block.  No more making new friends; the like-minded (or simple minded) fellow shoppers, trading shopping war stories from Christmases past while feasting on popcorn chicken, Coors Light and Red Bull. Gone is that visceral anticipation as the clock ticks down to the big store opening and then the thrill of knocking over the poor sap that drew the short straw and has to unlock the door.  Where’s the sport in just walking through the front door like a civilized human and wishing the guy that opens the door a happy holiday?  We’ll miss the adrenaline rush of throwing a crushing body block on a 70 year old woman and knocking her from housewares clean into cosmetics just so you can snatch that Ninja blender at 10 bucks off.  What’s this country come to when you can’t push, gouge, bite, punch and stab your way into the holiday season?  The next thing you know they’ll start offering plain red cups for your holiday coffee. 

Yeah, there is that.  Sometime in the middle of November I caught wind of another Starbucks brouhaha.  Those boys and girls in Starbucks management always seem to be able to brew up a tempest in a latte cup.  Wasn’t it just a few months back that the suits were encouraging baristas and the counter help who just want to make a couple bucks schlepping coffee to engage the general public in discussions about race?  “Pardon me sir but before I get this latte going can I ask you what you think about racial strife in America?"  So for this holiday season the coffee suits green lighted the removal of Christmas themes from the holiday cup; that’s right, no snowflakes or jolly snowmen, or ornaments.  Not even a stinkin’ evergreen tree.  It’s one thing to broach race relations with perfect strangers who want nothing more than a latte, extra foam please and make it snappy, but when you start fucking with the holidays you’re really asking for trouble.  And that's when the reindeer shit hit the fan. 

Best I could tell it was a self-proclaimed evangelist fellow named Joshua Feuerstein who flipped the switch that lit Starbucks up like the town square tree.  When he found that the coffee giant hadn’t printed the nativity on this year’s cup much less a snowflake Josh went crackers.  He accused Starbucks of taking Christ off the cup.  I’m going to go out on limb here and say that Christ was NEVER on a Starbucks cup.  Josh was mad.  Josh was indignant.  In fact he was so furiously pissed that you know what he did?  He marched right down to Starbucks and he ordered a coffee.  Feuerstein recounted his mission from God in a Facebook video titled "Starbucks REMOVED CHRISTMAS from their cups because they hate Jesus."  (Don’t you just love brevity in a title?) He ordered his drink and when the cashier asked for his name he said, “Merry Christmas.”  I told them my name is 'Merry Christmas.”  "Guess what, Starbucks?" Feuerstein said. "I tricked you into putting 'Merry Christmas' on your cup.”  But Josh didn’t stop at taking out his anger on the offending business by buying its product.  He encouraged his flock to follow suit and show Starbucks what for by going in and buying coffee; that’ll show em.  The kicker of course is that when asked their name they would say Merry Christmas.  I’m sure that the Starbucks brass was just in a hand wringing tizzy in the management meeting about millions of customers going into their shops to buy coffee and say Merry Christmas.  Look they’re in business to make money.  I doubt that corporate gives a shit what name I give.  As long as I have coin of the realm jingling in my pocket I could take my 6’1”, 205 pound old white guy self into a Starbucks and tell the barista that my name is Beyonce, or Beelzebub or Harry Balls and I’m pretty certain that management won’t stress in the least.

Isn’t corporate America way over represented in Christmas?  Do we really want business to set our holiday tone?  Hasn’t the holiday season been screwed up enough by the big money chase that it’s become?  The retail industry has managed to marginalize Thanksgiving.  I’m reminded of an exchange between Ebenezer Scrooge and his nephew Fred. 

“Nephew!” returned the uncle (Scrooge) sternly, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

It seems to me that what makes Christmas (or the holidays, or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa) special is to keep it in the way that we (with our families and friends) find meaningful.  For some it’s the religious observation, for others its Santa Claus, parties and endless gifts and for others it might be staring into the bottomless loneliness of a glass of Jim Beam at the local pub.  It's what you want it to be. 

At the end of his Facebook tirade Joshua Feuerstein boasted a triple in your face to Starbucks.  Aside from his “clever” Merry Christmas prank he wore a Jesus t-shirt into the shop (Because Starbucks “hates Jesus”) and carried his gun (Because Starbucks is against the 2^nd amendment).  Which brings me to something that’s always been a puzzler to me.  When I went to catechism the nuns always taught us that the holy trinity is God the father; the son; and the Holy Spirit.  And they warned of a warm after life if we didn’t get that straight in our heads and souls.  Yet here in America there is a fair number of Christians that worship a different trinity; God, guts and guns.  I can’t seem to reconcile Jesus and a 9 mm.  Feuerstein’s Christian vision has no problem seeing a marriage between guns and God particularly since, in another Facebook rant, he alluded to an armed uprising against a marriage he has a big problem with.  If you guessed gay marriage then you win a moment under the mistletoe with your favorite sexy film star.  And as for his Starbucks mission it’s not as if carrying a gun into a Starbucks was such a brave, ground breaking statement.  He did it in Arizona; an open carry state.  A little side note here. My days of anti-gun ranting are done.  I've reconciled myself to the notion that this is a horse that left the barn long ago and has moved on a few states.  You want a gun, get a gun.  Just don't be a complete fool and put a Glock into the hand of Jesus. 

All of this brings us to Christmas 2015 and a recent sermon by Pope Francis, “Christmas is approaching: there will be lights, parties, Christmas trees and nativity scenes … it’s all a charade. The world continues to go to war. The world has not chosen a peaceful path… There are wars today everywhere, and hate.”  I can’t say that I disagree in either a religious or secular sense. 

I don’t remember a time in America when there’s been such white hot hatred and anger.  We’re approaching a time that’s supposed to be, depending on how you keep it, a celebration of the Prince of Peace, or a time of giving to loved ones or the needy, or of goodwill to your fellow man.  Yet we don’t seem to be left with anything that resembles charity, or hope or a coming together.  And I’m not talking about terrorists indiscriminately killing over their warped view of a religion although that's a big part of the holiday damper. 

Christmas is supposedly when we celebrate a pair of Middle Eastern refugees who could find “no room at the inn,” and yet we have a tough talking blowhard of a presidential candidate who wouldn’t give asylum to 5 year old Syrian orphans fleeing violence and brutality (I guess the “guts” part of that trinity decided to beat feet at the thought of a parentless 5 year old Muslim kid).  We have the front running candidate who sees nothing particularly wrong with dissenters being “roughed up.”  The country is revisiting a time when a people are forced to hunker down, lay low and watch their Ps and Qs because of the way they look or dress.  Hell we’re divided over Willie Mays.  There was a minor uproar after it was announced that Mays would be getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  What have we come to when folks get indignant over the freaking Say Hey Kid?  Much, certainly not all, of our national rage is over a bunch of thugs who want us all to bow to their idea of religion and would make us do so at the point of a gun.  Which brings us full circle to the nut job who brandishes weapons because Starbucks and gay marriage threaten his notion of religion. No irony or hypocrisy here is there?  Which brings us to the words of Pope Francis. 

For our part the wife and I are going to keep Thanksgiving and Christmas as we always do. Family and friends will gather in our home; everyone will eat and drink in excess; we’ll pray and hope for a more charitable and friendly world (I fear in vain) and we’ll enter the New Year looking for better days.  We’re always open for extra guests in our home but there will be those for whom we won’t save a place at the table.  Corporate; back off of the holidays a bit.  You’ll get your fucking money.  To the intolerant and the religious nuts, particularly those purporting to be Christian, try and get a clue about what Christianity and Christmas are supposed to be about or just take your twisted views down the road. For my own part I’ll give an extra friendly nod to the woman in the hijab or the old fellows wearing turbans who walk the local rec path.  It couldn’t hurt and it might just make for a nicer moment for all.