Hello faithful readers! If I have any... ;)
Well, it's that time of year again! Welcome to the holidays! Now that we're all full of turkey and stuffing, the Christmas season can begin in earnest. I haven't written a post in a while, but sitting here this morning (Having been up since three AM, not to shop but to deal with a wakeful infant) and watching the news about fights breaking out in stores and a shooting in a parking lot at a Kohl's store somewhere in the country, I felt compelled to write about this insane thing that American's do every holiday season.
First off, Christmas comes waaaaay too early for me! I was out shopping for my Thanksgiving supplies earlier in the week, and felt dismayed at hearing Christmas music playing in the store! Now, I love Christmas music, don't get me wrong! But, there is something special to me about saving those songs up all year, and then bingeing on them during the holidays. (sure beats bingeing on candy!)
Christmas time just feels special to me. It's like there is something in the air. People seem a little nicer, happier. The songs and lights and beauty of it all enchants me. It's not about the gifts, though I love buying special gifts for the people I love and getting to see their faces when they open them far more than receiving gifts myself. It's just a really magical time of year.
But our insane society seems hell-bent on ruining it every year with more, and more and more marketing and stuff! Having 'Black Friday' sales on Thanksgiving now! It's just crazy! How did that happen?
I went two years ago to a Thursday night sale. All I wanted was a sewing machine. They were really cheap and it was for myself, not even for a gift. I got there way early, like two hours before the sales would begin. I canvassed the store, planned out my strategy. The aisle where the sewing machines were (there were only 10 of them, that's it) was roped off. So I stood there at the end of the aisle, chatting with other customers as they gathered. A woman pointed out to me a place in a side aisle I could stand to get a closer shot at the machines. Then they unroped the area a half hour or more before the sale was to start. So I went and stood next to the machines. My leg was touching one, I felt pretty good about it all.
Next to the sewing machines was a huge bin of bath towels for like 1.75 each or something. Like super cheap! Turns out most of the people in that aisle wanted those towels. As we stood there jammed together like sardines in a can, waiting for the store to announce the go ahead, people were already digging through the towels to find matching colors and then standing there with there hands on a pile of them. Some people even put them in their carts, even though the store repeatedly announced that you should not be putting sale items in your cart till the sale began. Store employees came by and told people to stop only to be completely ignored. The behavior was completely juvenile!
Finally they began the sale some ten or twenty minutes early. I quickly grabbed my sewing machine and put it in my cart. Then I turned to see the towels disappearing so fast it was almost comical. In a moment of silliness, I dove underneath someone, reached my arm down in the bin and managed to grab three or four of them. I don't know what came over me, it was like mob mentality.
Then I was completely boxed in and couldn't get out of that aisle for nearly half an hour. I kind of had to laugh at the people who were mad that the towels were gone. It took no more than a minute for what had to be maybe a few hundred towels to completely go.
I went around the rest of the store, managed to pick up a few good deals for gifts for the kids, and then made my way to the checkout where I stood in line for ages. When I came out of the store and got home, I felt like the shell shocked survivor of some natural disaster! NEVER again will I put myself through that, I mean seriously, never again.
The stores do this on purpose, build up these frenzied events by playing on human nature. People camping out since last Sunday for deals?! I just can't fathom it!
Thankfully, there does seem to be a movement this year of people that are boycotting this kind of behavior. But so long as people continue to allow the stores to manipulate them, then this sort of thing will go on. We all really need to think about what the holidays mean to us, and figure out if the insanity is really worth it. It isn't to me.
So that's my soap box speech for today! Be safe folks!
Dawn
