In fact, that it gets made so perennially attests to the fact that it remains unresolved. In fact, the insinuation of the term "Black Friday" into our seasonal lexicon, and the metastasizing of that day into the evening of Thanksgiving marks the confirmation of its ridiculousness.
As we can see by what's happened to our culture in the last forty years, when regard for the family unit shifts even modestly from veneration to neglect, civic association and community soon follow as fading institutions. Technology does its part to assist. Since smartphones have become an extension of the human anatomy, we barely occupy the same physical space anymore.
Consider this use of the term "dead time":
Bill Tancer, the general manager of global retail for Experian, sees it as a confluence of sophisticated retailing and consumer boredom, thanks to the swelling population of cyber-deal surfers on Thanksgiving. He’s been following for the past decade a growing group of restless consumers who turn to the Internet for entertainment and holiday shopping on the holiday. From 2003 to 2011, the No. 1 online shopping day has been Thanksgiving, according to his findings. Last year was the first that the so-called Cyber Monday, the Monday after the holiday, eclipsed Thanksgiving Day in online sales.It makes sense then for retailers to just open the doors. They wouldn’t if we didn’t walk through them. . .
“I don’t know if it’s stealing our time from us, since consumers have shown a strong interest in searching for those deals and making purchases on Thanksgiving,” he says. “There’s a lot of dead time while that turkey is in the oven. It’s a good time to shop.”
Dead time. So much for leaning back on the couch, taking in the aromas wafting from the kitchen, catching up with cousins and nephews, watching parades on television, or perhaps reflecting on the depth of one's gratitude.
Libertarians, of course, take a "leave-those-consumers-alone" approach. Their rabid scouring of deals and sales harms neither your person nor property, so it's none of your business.
And that stance, of course, abets the leftist mocking of the conservative struggle to preserve that which made western civilization uniquely great. The taunt is that our championing of pure economic freedom runs smack dab, like a cruise ship into an iceberg, into our cherishing of traditions steeped in God and family.
Which gets us back to the point that cannot be hammered home enough: We can't dispense with any of the three pillars of our worldview. A free-market economy, a foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature, and, most relevant here, an understanding that Western civilization uniquely blesses humankind precisely because of its Judeo-Christian foundation, are each and all essential.
From the John Adams quote ""Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other," to the modern-day work of the Acton Institute and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, this little flame of truth has kept flickering, no matter how stiff the winds of obscuration or dark the night of distraction.
The first step in countering the Black-Friday-ization of our society is to choose not to participate - indeed, to choose to gather dear ones in your home and sufficiently entice them to remain there in conscious fellowship with your joy - and your cooking. Beyond that, it's having this arrow in your polemical quiver: The point of the truly conservative worldview is to keep meaning front and center in our moment-to-moment existence.
Hear, hear.
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