Black Friday

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. Mine was okay. Wednesday was better actually. My daughter and I made a turkey and mashed potatoes and corn casserole and cranberry salad and pumpkin pies. Actually she did most of the making and I did the dishes. She had a girlfriend from college over for lunch and then we watched an old movie together. It was a nice day. Yesterday was the family dinner with the inlaws at a hall which I'd arranged. But I had forgotten to arrange for heat to be turned up ahead of us arriving and so the complaining began promptly. For at least 4 hours I watched as one after another tried to turn the heat up although I repeatedly explained it had to be done by computer by a trained person. And when the trained person arrived after my calling him and disrupting his dinner, he couldn't get it to work perhaps due to all the tampering others had been doing. So for 4 hours I listened to complaining and whining and even insulting about how this hall rental had been handled. Thanks so much. It cost them nothing. They didn't have to clean it. They just had to show up and eat. Today we found out that a repairman had to be called and there will be expense to fix this thermostat situation. The food was good. But somehow I lost track of Thanksgiving in the midst of all the whining and complaining. How sad is that?

So now today is Black Friday. I have relatives who planned to be at the stores by 5AM. The newsman said there were 50,000 people in the mall between midnight and 2AM. There were people camping in tents in the parking lot at Best Buy last night in November in Iowa where the temps were in the 20s. Why? What does all the grabbing, fighting, commercialism have to do with the coming of Christmas? The coming of Christ? The radio today was playing a lot of Christmas carols, while people are out fighting to save a buck or two. On TV a lady said she plans to spend $1500 on Christmas this year so she had to go fight the crowds to make such a little amount spread far enough. "Little amount?" The next story on the nightly news was about the face of hunger in America. It showed a lady who tries to feed a family of 2 adults and 4 kids on $150 a month for groceries from her unemployment. The kids only get to eat breakfast a couple days a week. She cried because she couldn't afford to buy a box of cereal for them. She eats her lunch at a soup kitchen many days of the week. And then the bright spot was the story about the 8-yr-old girl who asked Santa for a kidney and a friend of the family gave her one of hers. I know it is called black Friday because that is when the retailers hope to get into the black for the year. But I find it blackly depressing as it points out the skewed priorities of some people and the vast disparities in people's circumstances. So, did I go shopping? Kinda, not really. My husband needed to pick up something at Best Buy for our business so we went closer to noon. I let him out and I went to Barnes and Noble to use the restroom and then bought a couple books I've been wanting to read and did get a gift for my sister-in-law to give to her granddaughter. Then we ate lunch and came home. It was very good to get home away from the crowds. I hope we can put the "thanks" back in Thanksgiving and keep "Christ" in Christmas.