Black Friday -- News from the Front

Mack Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Black Friday – News from the Front

Once upon a time holidays did not feature casualty lists or after-action reports. The most common complaint about Christmas (even then a priest or minister speaking of Advent was truly a vox clamantis in deserto) was that it was no longer Christmas at all but rather a secularized shopping racket, more a product of advertising rather than of God’s mercy.

Christmas shopping was accomplished among crowds, but the crowds were happy ones and the Christmas lights in the shops and along the streets brightened the early winter fully as well as the treats and sweets and happy anticipation of largesse under the tree on Christmas morning. Although we all tend to view our childhood days through the misty eyes of flawed remembrance, I really do not think that our parents or grandparents ever considered the possibility of being shot, stabbed, bombed, or trampled to death while Christmas shopping.

For those few eccentrics who attended divine services on Christmas the worst fear was that the pastor’s sermon connecting an obscure verse in Leviticus with the Christmas narrative in St. Luke and finally summing up with something by Oliver Goldsmith would yawn on for too long. The possibility of being shot, stabbed, or bombed in church was as unthinkable as being shot, stabbed, or bombed at the toy train display in Sears.

In those debit card-innocent times the Friday after Thanksgiving was, well, Friday, with leftovers on the table and football games on the black-and-white for the old folks (geezers in their 30s), and real football in the leafy front yard for the kids. Now the day is cursed as Black Friday, the first day of something miscalled The Christmas Season (a reminder: the four weeks before the Feast of the Nativity is Advent; Christmas is the twelve days from the Feast of the Nativity to the Feast of the Epiphany), and aimless souls without families, values, a cultural heritage, or any sense line up obediently in the night-time not to worship the Child in a manger but to worship the acquisition of more possessions.

When the doors to the Temples of Stuff are opened – or broken down by the wild-eye faithful armed with credit and curses – on Unholy Friday the primitive urge to sacrifice one’s very self for shiny beads and plastic boxes that light up and make noise results in threats, violence, and even death.

In 1836 the federal forces under Santa Anna raised a red flag from San Fernando Church to tell the rebels in the Alamo that there would be no prisoners; I suppose now Santa Anna would send the same cruel message with a flag advertising 30% off.

Anne of Green Gables was delighted in her one Christmas gift, a new dress. She was also surprised; her foster parents were Presbyterians of the old school and did not keep Christmas. Indeed, Anne had little time to oooh and ahhh over her gift because she had to hurry to school on Christmas day. A 21st century Anne might backhand someone at the sales on Christmas afternoon.

Christian martyrs still suffer torture with hymns on their lips; should they instead sing “Shiny stuff, plastic junk, little boxes that light up and make noises, shoes made in slave-labor camps, divine big-screens, parking-lot robberies, shoplifting, cutting someone else’s trees, carrying pistols to the sales – all for You, O Holy Transient Stuff, all for You…?”

When Mr. Pickwick took the stagecoach to visit friends for Christmas, he carried with him, as C. S. Lewis reminds us, a codfish (BIG codfish; the driver had trouble finding space for it) for his hosts, not masses of discounted debris and certainly not a bomb.

I speak not to disprove (as Marc Antony might say) material goods; I like material goods: toys for the children, Christmas trees (and presents thereunder with my name on them!), Christmas dinner, overdosing on Christmas candy, coffee with family and friends in the wonderful peace in the afternoon – these are all very good.

Most people like Christmas, both the observant and the secular parts, but Christmas is not properly kept when casualty lists now seem as common as Christmas cards.

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