Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Let’s Put the Friday Back into Black Friday
Two figures scrambled through the smoke and rubble under fire, and tumbled into a shell hole for cover.
“Whew!” exclaimed the younger one, wiping her brow and reloading her fifty shades-of-blue-death eye shadow. “That was close. But Mother, isn’t ‘door-buster’ a metaphor?”
“I won’t hear un-American talk like that!” exclaimed the older, wiping the blood from her credit card. “When Giganto-Mart advertises a door-buster sale, then by all that’s holy in the sales papers we’re gonna bust the door.”
“You didn’t have to take down that poor clerk. You hit him with his own walker, after all.”
“Oh, well, he’ll just have to accept the holiday merriment. Casualty lists are part of the fun of Black Friday. Besides, he was between me and the 20% discount sale on Orwellian telescreens.”
“But what about the old woman you ran down in the parking lot?”
“Dear, you’re missing the plot – it’s all about the 20% discount. Hey, What Would Darwin Do? I’m sure the old gal was glad to go. She lived a happy life. She needed to clear the way for a new generation of shoppers.”
“Is that what happened to my father? Darwinianism?”
“Ah, your father. Now there was a total guy. Never worked unless he needed a bottle or a fix between checks. Beaten to death for his sleeping bag on a cold night outside a Giganto-Mart. But he died happy – he was the first in line that October for a 20% discount sale, and got his picture on television chanting our national anthems, ‘Woo, woo!’ and ‘20% off!’ His life had meaning because he was shown on television waiting passively in front of a Giganto-Mart. That’s what keeps America great.”
“Mother, didn’t the ancients call this season something different?”
“There were several seasons, in fact. The two Christian holy days of All Saints and All souls were dismissed in favor of something called Halloween. That was when everyone began demanding free stuff. Then there was the ancient Christian season of Advent, which was renamed The Christmas Season. The original Christmas lasted from midnight on December 24th until January 6th, the Epiphany, but all that was jammed together as New Year’s.”
“I’ll gaggle it on my Dumbphone after I check my, my, my MeMeMeSpace for meaningless comments in order to validate my meaningless life.”
“Most of that old stuff is gone, and in our progressive age The Holiday Season is from the Back-to-School Salesmas in June to the holy Spring Salesmas in February. The anchor holidays are Pre-Black Friday, which some old people still call All Saints and All Souls, the two weeks of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Buystuffmas, New Year’s Salesmas, and Easter Bunny Salesmas.”
“So our seasons and our lives are predicated on losing sleep, waiting in lines, and pushing around other people in order to buy more of the same made-in-China stuff we already have? That’s our gift to civilization? All because advertising and our culture tell us we are defined by how much toxic plastic debris we acquire?”
“At a 20% discount, child, at a 20& discount. Remember those sacred words, and remember to stand stall and chant them proudly: Woo, woo! 20% discount!”
“Lock and load, Mama, lock and load.”
-30-
Showing posts with label Christmas Shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas Shopping. Show all posts
Monday, December 2, 2013
Sunday, November 27, 2011
'Tis the Season to be Feral
Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com‘Tis the Season to be Feral
Perhaps the chaos began on election day, when most Texans lined up in the darkness, some camping in tents, eagerly awaiting the opening of the polls so that they could make wise, prayerful choices in the selection of their own laws and leaders.
The real crowd dynamics began with the Annual Holy Buying of Chinese %#@&, just before Advent. On Envy Friday a woman shopping in an Up-Against-the-Wall Mart in California discharged pepper spray at dozens of her fellow believers. She was desperate to buy the last in-stock microscope to help her daughter win a science scholarship.
Screaming hordes of wild-eyed literates bashed down the doors of bookstores in cities everywhere, fighting for the latest translation of St. Augustine’s City of God. One man was stabbed in the hand while reaching for a copy of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. “It’s a metaphorical jungle reminiscent of the post-modernist school of deconstructionist theory in there,” he said while being bandaged by the medics in the parking lot.
In music stores, the theft of boxed sets of Poulenc, Rautavaara, and Corigliana have caused real safety problems. “We had mall security escort a woman to her car with her Lyons Opera Chorus and Orchestra CD of Les Dialogues des Carmelites,” reported Tiffany Defarge, a store employee.
Police responded to a 911 call from a religious goods store one minute after midnight with a report that two women were trying to strangle each other with rosary beads and that a flash-mob was stampeding through the aisles stealing bibles. The situation grew really ugly with an embedded dispute regarding the merits of the Douay-Rheims versus the Precious Moments versions. The brawl spilled outside with The Spirit of Vatican II-istas and the Traditionalissimos punching each other in a bitter dispute about dynamic equivalence as opposed to closer Latin meanings in the new English translation of the canon of the Mass.
Crowd control was also a problem outside Goodwill and Salvation Army stores because of people camping out in long lines all night long, each fiercely determined to be the first to donate warm winter coats and good used toys to poor children.
Another crowd situation obtained in shoe stores where concerned fathers lined up to buy their children good, sensible, feet-healthy shoes.
Numerous flight delays were reported because in overcrowded airports all over America healthy people were insistent that the disabled and the elderly be allowed to board first.
Finally, a representative of the NBA has announced that the basketball season will not begin on Christmas Day. “It would be insensitive for any for-profit organization to show disrespect to a minority religion on one of their holy days. Christians will want to be home with their families after morning worship, opening gifts and playing with their children and enjoying Christmas dinner. We want to join with America’s leading retailers and the American people who have in the past month led the way in demonstrating respect for 2,000 years of Christian faith.”
Oh, yeah.
Now back to The Hallmark Channel.
-30-
Sunday, November 28, 2010
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.
-30-
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.
-30-
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