Running With The Bulls

 

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It’s a time for family, great food and a chance to reflect on our blessings.

However the following day known as “Black Friday” can be as scary as it sounds. And each year it seems to get scarier.

This year a growing number of retailers are opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day. One is opening at 5:00PM, when many people are just sitting down to dinner. America’s biggest store vows to open at 8:00pm, which is being met with threats of a possible strike by workers angered by having their holiday yanked out from under them. 

A once quiet unhurried time with family has become yet another day to score bargains on Christmas gifts. It is shopping run amuck; crazed customers who trample and elbow one another like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. 

The term “Black Friday” originated In Philadelphia. It was coined for the congested streets and disruptive pedestrian traffic as people surged into stores after Thanksgiving. In recent years Black Friday has been known as a time has become symbolic to a time when retailers operate at a profit or “in the black.” 

Ok, no one wants American companies to operate in the black more than I do. That means more jobs, which in turn continue to pump dollars into a recovering economy.  

But why can’t retailers wait just a few more hours until Friday so their hard working employees can rest before the madness begins? 

I guess part of that question needs to be directed at us.

Retailers wouldn’t keep pushing the Black Friday envelope if customers weren’t “feeding the beast.”  

Why do we do this?

Hubs and I talked a few weeks ago and came to the sobering realization that neither one of us could remember a single gift we received last year.  Our cat Maggie tipped over the Christmas tree, but what sat under it is a long forgotten mystery.

Pitiful huh? 

Christmas is about celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the greatest birthday boy of them all. Our gifts should be going to HIM. 

Jesus is easy to buy for. He wants us to be good to each other, to look after each other. It can be as simple as inviting a lonely neighbor to Christmas Eve service, and dinner the following day. It can be as simple as donating our gift money as well as the time we would have spent in the mall helping those in need.  And we can finally peer out from behind the wrapping paper and reconnect with those who matter most.

Thus, Hubs and I are doing things differently this year. Instead of giving things, we’re giving of ourselves.  No hustle and bustle or lists to check twice.  

We’ll be decorating our home, watching old scratchy black and white Ebenezer Scrooge movies. We’ll be hanging out with friends, meeting for coffee, attending their gatherings.  We’ll be attending our church’s annual celebration for the King of Kings in a sanctuary scented with pine boughs, lined with beautiful rich red poinsettias and alive with the sounds of voices lifted in song.  

The good news for bargain hunters is that love is free. There are no smoking credit cards, or second jobs needed to pay off the bills that follow.  

All that’s required is an open and willing heart.

Michelle Close Mills ©