People Watching on Black Friday

(Except it was Thanksgiving night)

The fourth Thursday in November is Thanksgiving in the good ol' US of A. (Can I get a 'Murica!!!)
The day after is Black Friday, although now, people have started calling the day before--Grey Thursday.

Because, of course, focusing on the real meaning of Thanksgiving--giving thanks for all that we have--isn't enough. We need to spend it spending money...on more stuff

On Thanksgiving, Stephen and I decided to peek in on  the masses crowding a  WalMart in a smallish down in Northern California (that I consider large because...I'm a hick). We were curious to watch this social experiment  of sorts--were people really ferociously shopping on Thanksgiving?

The atmosphere was tense. People who really should have been lounging on the couch, lazying away their turkey and counting their blessings were marching stonily toward aisles of plastic merchandise. WalMart employees, clad in faded blue and khaki, directed traffic with stony-faced seriousness that made me gulp with fear.

Women stared at glossy coupons, veritable treasure maps in the land of the Mart of Wal. A woman ran into me, not even stopping to make sure she hadn't bruised the roundly pregnant woman. (She hadn't; I was fatter.)

It was a zoo, teeming with humanity that wasn't quite human.  I kept peering at price tags, surreptitiously glancing at people's maps, looking and trying to find just what  was so valuable. There was a giant Darth Vader doll on sale, a few baby toys that were marked down, and I suspected there was a giant t.v. that was relatively cheap somewhere... But really, there wasn't anything that even remotely had the power to lure me into waiting outside a dark store, standing in long lines, and running smack into other pregnant women. Or crazed men and women, intent on finding "a good deal".

It didn't make sense. The restrained rage, the insistence, the stress...all for some plastic, discounted at a few dollars off.
These people weren't standing in line for groceries to feed their children, or a greatly discounted car, a scholarship to an amazing school--they were standing in line for 2 ft. tall Darth Vader dolls.

It was odd.
It was sad.
It was miserably ironic.

I know that shopping Black Friday morn is a tradition for some. An odd tradition, sure, but some people do plan their Christmas budgets around Black Friday deals. But shopping--rather, rampaging--for cheap stuff from Wal Mart on Thanksgiving evening... Feeling stressed, annoyed, angry, and making other people go to work on a day of giving thanks--all for snazzy new plastic.. There's something wrong with that. Truly.

There's isn't a wrong or right day to go shopping. There's nothing wrong with wanting good deals. (I LOVE a good deal.) But most the people in Wal Mart that day weren't filled with gratitude, with generosity, or with joy. They were filled with greed, desire, and annoyance at the other humans who blocked their path. And that's not a good reason to go shopping.

Except this year, it started on Thanksgiving.