There's been a lot of bloviating nonsense floating around the web lately - people weeping and wailing and gnashing their childish little teeth about how wicked, evil, unAmerican and downright "godless" you are if you decide to pick up a few gifts on November 27th this year. While I appreciate the great deference being paid to my dear wife's birthday, I think the dramatic concern over who shops and how many people shop on Turkey Day is more than a little over the top.
Take, for instance, Matt Walsh, whose writing I appreciate and who I normally find remarkably reasonable and well-centered. A man grounded in common sense and dedicated to the balanced principles of political liberty and personal moral decency.
Well, today he's having a hyperventilating cow over this whole "Black Thanksgiving" thing. I mean, yeah, as the king of online hyperbole, you might expect him to get his panties in a knot over...well, just about anything. But he (albeit hyperbolically) is suggesting that Thanksgiving shoppers be deported and that it's somehow morally wrong to hit the sales (and/or provide the sales) on that oh-so sacred day.
Well, Matt, thanks for taking the moral high ground and judging me for wanting to save some of my hard-earned money as I try to make life a little nicer for my family.
Sure, Thanksgiving is great - get together with lots of family (which is so super-fun for an introvert), eat way too much food, and if you like sportsing, I suppose there are some kind of sports things or other occurring on that day, too. Oh yeah, and be thankful.
Because, you know, it's important to remember all with which you have been blessed, and cultivate an attitude of gratitude during 1/365th of the year, while being sure that you don't commit the unforgivable sin of SHOPPING!
Look, there's no commandment against transacting purchases on certain national holidays. Maybe Matt Walsh should be sparing all his righteous indignation for those who break the Sabbath. Or, maybe, he and others like him should just chill out and worry about what goes on in their own home on Thanksgiving.
As for those sniveling about those evil companies that are forcing people to work on that blessed Thursday...let me call the wahmbulance. Which I actually can do, because emergency services are among the MANY different occupations that work every day of the year, regardless of whether or not you think it should be a day reserved for stuffing your thankful face with turkey, mashed potatoes. and pie. For example, working in TV news throughout the '90s, I worked every single holiday (Christmas and Easter included) every year.
The world won't come to a grinding halt on Thanksgiving (no hospitals, no police, no gas stations, no TV programming, no sportsing, no electrical power - all operations that require people to work), nor should it. That goes for retail, too. And if I want to escape my over-crowded house and save a couple hundred dollars on a TV that day, I AM THANKFUL that I live in the greatest nation on earth and can do so if I choose.
Right after I eat my pie.
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