{"id":1701,"date":"2015-12-06T16:10:46","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T20:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2015-12-06T16:12:06","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T20:12:06","slug":"black-friday-is-a-mixed-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1701","title":{"rendered":"Black Friday is a Mixed Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I confirmed a call to ordained ministry, my dad told me something I now tell students preparing for ordained ministry. \u00a0The life of a pastor can be summed up in one imperative. \u00a0On Christmas Eve, after the last worship service, make sure every toilet in the church is flushed. \u00a0This imperative assumes an important fact. \u00a0The imperative assumes that, on Christmas Eve, the pastor is the only one working. \u00a0Even though the church may have someone on staff to lock up doors and to care for post-worship tidying, that person will not be working on Christmas Eve. \u00a0My dad has flushed many Christmas Eve toilets over his half-century of ministry. \u00a0Such is the glamorous life of an inn-keeper at Christmas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up in a parsonage, Advent involved more than the usual tidying up, as we hosted choir parties, youth parties, and Sunday School parties. \u00a0The parties were spread out over Advent, so \u201cChristmas\u201d started early. \u00a0My brother and I sliced sausage rolls and cut crusts off fancy little loaves of bread used only for such parties. \u00a0We cleaned bathrooms and took out trash and dusted bookshelves, so guests would know we considered them worth the trouble. \u00a0The timing of these church parties at our house necessitated that Christmas jump the calendar forward to Thanksgiving. \u00a0We would often put up the tree before Thanksgiving, so everything would be ready when we came back from my grandparents\u2019 annual Thanksgiving reunion. \u00a0\u00a0Technically, Advent is about anticipation \u2013 anticipating the birth of Jesus. \u00a0But my mother is a practical woman, and she was not about to let a liturgical rule discombobulate the proper ordering of things. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My second home growing up \u2013 my home away from home \u2013 was the nearest shopping mall. \u00a0My mother loves shopping malls. \u00a0A fantastically creative seamstress, she goes to the mall to spark her imagination for unique twists on fashion. \u00a0She started a Thanksgiving shopping tradition when I was young. \u00a0Thanksgiving was my father\u2019s family\u2019s holiday. \u00a0One set of cousins on that side did not celebrate Christmas, and my father always worked on Christmas Eve, so we would travel each year to Mineral Wells for a Thanksgiving extravaganza. \u00a0This involved Russel Stover candies, squash casseroles, fried okra, turkey, ham, and at least a dozen pies. \u00a0After all this cooking and an interminable amount of dish-washing, every woman and girl-child in the family was exhausted. \u00a0While every man and boy-child sat around watching football Friday after Thanksgiving, those of us who had cooked and cleaned on Thanksgiving escaped to a fancy shopping mall in Ft. Worth. \u00a0We spent the Friday after Thanksgiving walking under sparkling Christmas lights, looking at neatly arranged clothes \u2013 and decidedly <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>cooking or cleaning. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These are the backdrop stories for my assessment of what has come to be known as \u201cBlack Friday.\u201d \u00a0This time of year, news and social media sources offer a clashing combination of enticement and shame. \u00a0\u201cShop big savings!\u201d advertisements compete with \u201cShame on greedy shoppers!\u201d op-eds, videos, and photos. \u00a0News crews take cameras to big box stores, not upscale boutiques. \u00a0Women who shop in bulk at Costco are not particularly greedy. \u00a0But they apparently create a better spectacle for moralistic scorn than women shopping at Talbots. \u00a0And women shopping anywhere are apparently a more effective story about the ungodly spread of rampant consumerism than are men watching football in the living room. \u00a0I counter that dressing rooms can be a place for sisterly bonding, even with complete strangers. \u00a0I prefer trying on clothes alongside other real people, with real, non-photo-shopped bodies and faces. \u00a0Malls are more humanizing than shopping on my computer, trying to imagine what a dress on a pretend person would look like on my actual self. \u00a0There can be a camaraderie of such kindness on \u201cBlack Friday.\u201d \u00a0I have seen holy mischief at the mall \u2013 the presence of God in the mix of neighbors watching mechanical bears sing \u201cSilent Night,\u201d weeks before we are, technically, supposed to celebrate the birth of Jesus.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have been searching my brain for any possible upside to a new \u201cBlack Friday\u201d trend, and I have come up short. \u00a0Some stores have taken to opening on Thanksgiving night and staying open all night long, jumpstarting the holiday season by telling employees to host people all night long. \u00a0This, I submit, is a story of greed, and not on the part of shoppers. \u00a0My dad taught me to assume that a good employer does not expect the janitor to work on Christmas Eve. \u00a0Charles Dickens teaches us that a boss who expects employees to work on an important feast day is headed toward a gloomy fate. \u00a0Executives who tallied the numbers and opted for the trend of all-night holiday shopping should take another look, in the mirror. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I confirmed a call to ordained ministry, my dad told me something I now tell students preparing for ordained ministry. \u00a0The life of a pastor can be summed up in one imperative. \u00a0On Christmas Eve, after the last worship service, make sure every toilet in the church is flushed. \u00a0This imperative assumes an important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-ethics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-rr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1702,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions\/1702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}