Black Friday

After hearing the reports about Black Friday violence, after reading about the lines, the crowds, the billions of dollars spent on "great deals", after seeing the abandoned Ford factory parking lot 2 miles from my house converted into "shuttle parking" for Twelve Oaks Mall, I have been in a kind of sick depression for the last 24 hours.  I am feeling ashamed to be an American during this season.  It seems like more than ever our sole focus is on consuming, buying, getting, having more stuff, more electronics, more food, more clothes, more crap that we do not need and do not have room for.  Does anyone really need to stand in line for hours to buy an Xbox for $200?  Which is probably their third game system, played on their third (or fourth or fifth) plasma TV.  And of course, then you need to spend another $200 on games, controllers, headsets, and rocker chairs.  What value is ANY of this stuff?  And the time?  What value do we place on our time when we spend hours buying this junk, hours setting it all up, and hours playing?  And next year there's something better and we do it all again. 

It is easy to say "that's not me, I don't do that", but it is our culture.  I am sickened and embarrassed by the way the world views us as Americans for the way we "celebrate" the "holidays".  Even a modest celebration entails buying gifts that we don't need and are often meaningless and involves quantities of food that are practically obscene.  How is this celebrating?  Everyone is stressed, anxious, petty, jealous, greedy, and this is what we teach our children is a "magical Christmas". 

I know that I see the world differently that most people.  I remember picking up Solomon and Tinsaye and getting ready to leave the orphanage and telling them to get their stuff.  Every possession they owned fit in the front pockets of their shiny new Land's End backpacks we brought for them.  The clothes they were wearing had to be returned to the orphanage for the other children.  I saw people in Ethiopia stand in line for six hours or more not to get an Xbox,  but to see a doctor.  They didn't pepper spray anyone, they didn't get overflow parking.  How could the $400 you spent on more electronics have changed the lives of any one of those people? 

It's easy to say "we can't fix the world, Ethiopia has their own problems, it's not about me, I'm an American and I deserve this stuff".  In case you hadn't noticed, it's not Ethiopians coming to get food from your local food bank.  It's not Ethiopians lined up at the Salvation Army trying to find winter boots for their kids.  I have students that I see every day that take showers at school because they have no running water in their house.  I have students who live in their cars or with relatives with no electricity.  When we ask parents of needy children at our school how we can help their family for Christmas, they ask for socks, mittens, and gift cards to gas stations so they can keep gas in their cars to get to their minimum wage jobs and be able to pay the heating bill.  When Brian was handing out food baskets at our church last year he tried to give a family a turkey for their Christmas dinner, but they refused because they were living in a motel and didn't have an oven to cook it.  They took the packaged food that they could heat up in a microwave.  How could the $400 you spent on more electronics have changed the lives of any one of those people?

Does anyone else see these people?  Does anyone else think America is asking for some serious cosmic smackdown by living in such smug oblivion?  DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!  You!  Today!  Change something about the way you live so that others suffer less.  If you want to give your children a magical Christmas, make it about people and not things.  Make it about Jesus and not Santa.  Make it about lists of things you can give instead of lists of things you want..  Instead of spending three hours in line to see Santa at the mall, or three hours in line waiting to buy more stuff, spend three hours with your kid volunteering at a food bank.  And then do it again in January.  And keep doing it.  Listen to the people you meet there and then listen to what God tells you to do about it.

Sorry if this post bothers you, it bothers me too.