Thank Full

Black Friday here, weather at a pleasant 60 degrees Fahrenheit and credit cards holding much hotter. Though we don't "do" Black Friday by visiting big box stores at odd hours of day and night, Rob and I get online pretty early to score the deals. This morning I was at Sports Authority and Swim Labs sites over breakfast while upstairs Rob was shopping at Best Buy and Home Depot. Cannot wait to get the credit card statement for our overlapping hour of productive clicking.

The annual hype over Black Friday deals was matched by the higher-than-normal hype over starting shopping ON Thanksgiving. Editorials slammed the idea of making employees work on the holiday and criticized shoppers who lined up en masse to make their minimum-wage hours filled and busy. Since my thoughts turned to shopping early this morning I can't stop to criticize, but I will comment just a bit.  If the whole point of Thanksgiving is to stop and be filled with thanks for our blessings, how healthy can it be to immediately turn to our wishlists and focus on what we are lacking, missing, wanting?  It seems that the window for feeling full (of turkey, friends, family and pie) is closing and the doorway to feeling a consumerish angsty want opens earlier and earlier. It would be better if we flipped the holidays, if we spent one day on shopping and buying what we thought we needed, and the next thirty on giving thanks for what we already have.