In case you haven’t already heard, more retailers are following the lead of one of America’s largest corporate employers of poverty wage earners, Walmart, in starting the beautiful, family values oriented tradition of Black Friday early this year, on Thanksgiving Day.

For all the rhetoric from right wing ass-wipes at the Fox Propaganda News Network about the “War on Christmas” which refers mostly to the language being used about the Christmas holiday – stores and it’s associates saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” I’ve yet to hear much bellyaching about the real stain on the holiday season, Black Friday.  This is not surprising, given the level of hypocrisy that forever flows from the mouths of conservative leaders and the so called Christian right, as they continue demonizing the poor, fighting to cut federal food assistance to them, fighting to not raise the minimum wage, and  fighting to keep them from affording health care.  But dammit, why can’t the working poor say “Merry Christmas,” dammit!  Especially on Black Friday, that wonderful demonstration of family values and good will towards men, peace on Earth, and of course, bargain shopping!

I remember as a kid the talk in church about how Christmas had become so materialistic, and all about the presents.  But I don’t remember as a kid the annual tradition of retail store violence, stampedes and death, all so consumers could get the best price possible, that now regularly occurs, and escalates, each year on Black Friday.  Now, more and more retailers are taking their cues from Walmart and Best Buy and beginning their Black Friday on Thanksgiving Day.  Refusing to be out greeded, the executives at K-Mart are showing they mean business and take no prisoners when it comes to being the top destroyer of an American holiday: they are opening their doors at 6 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, and will remain open for 41 hours straight, as if they hope to eradicate the notion of family time on Turkey Day all together with a shopping binge that Santa Clause on crystal meth can’t top.  It appears a majority of all major retailers will be opening this Thanksgiving, with notable exceptions such as Costco and Home Depot.  If Orange is the New Black, then Thanksgiving is the New Black Friday, and our society and it’s most underpaid workers suffer more as we willfully participate in this corporate designed takeover of our family time holiday.

What is infuriating is that for all the complaining or moralizing we do as a society about the ever uglier, evolving, consumer, bargain hunting war-fare tradition of the holidays, enough of us still line up at the retail doors like sheep to a slaughter.  And sometimes slaughters happen.  It doesn’t take a cynic to predict that at some point over next weekend, there will be video footage from a retail store somewhere in America of shoppers fist fighting, or trampling over one another, to get the last sale item in stock.  This is accepted as part of the holidays.  If someone dies as a result of a stampede over a great price on elecronics, well, it was a low, low price.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Each person can do their part this year by refusing to go Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving.  Yes, I’m talking about boycotting Black Friday this upcoming Thursday, the day formerly known as Thanksgiving.  Surely we could all agree. or most all agree, that we can wait until Friday to hunt for the elusive “best bargain” around.  Personally, I skip that vile shopping weekend all together – I’ve yet to find a bargain that is worth the horror show of watching ugly Americans turned against Americans in a blind, consumer driven spell.

The picture posted above is from the employee area of a Walmart in Canton, Ohio.  The Walmart employees there are taking up food donations to feed their co-workers who can’t afford a good Thanksgiving meal on their Walmart wages.  Surely, this a sign of the times on corporate ruled America, where the working poor have to share their food with each other, as their minimum wage doesn’t provide the bare minimums, but their slave masters continue racking up record, multi-billion dollar profits that funnel up to the top 1 percent of the country who buy the politicians and write the labor and tax laws that subjugate the rest of us.  A Walmart spokesperson (code for paid liar and bullshit artist) is quoted in the Ohio online newspaper Cleveland.com as saying “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships.”  He alleges the food drive is by employees, for employees who face unusual hardships over the holidays, like a spouse losing a job, etc.

Anyone foolish enough to think that the decision makers up the food chain in corporate Walmart, the profit creators, or as they would have us call them, the “job creators” actually give even a remote shit about the welfare of it’s employees, should look towards Walmart’s response to the trampling death of a security guard at one of its stores in Long Island, Black Friday, 2008.  Just before the scheduled opening at 5.a.m., the heard of shoppers broke the doors and trampled to death a security guard, and injured others.  In a show of compassion for it’s employees and the community that were witness to this absurd celebration of Black Friday, Walmart re-opened the store the very same day, by 1 p.m.  Apparently, the blood was mopped up good enough to allow the show to go on.  I have included the New York Times link to that historical day for your convenience here, as I  don’t think the incident got enough coverage, and the fact that Walmart so callously re-opened the store hours later is rarely mentioned, if ever, in Fox’s “news” about the War on Christmas.  I would encourage you to read the story and shared the link on social media to remind people how caring these poverty wage employers are about their fellow man and country:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Judas is said to have betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  Today we are betraying each other and our society for a great price on a flat screen television.  But as long as we say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” I guess that makes it alright.

I’m going to boycott all retail stores on Thanksgiving, and hope all of you will do the same.  I want to also acknowledge and thank all people who have to work on the holidays.  Many are necessary, and we give our thanks and appreciation to them: hospitals, fireman, policeman, and gas station workers who make travel possible, etc.  But we need not participate in the “need” that retail giants use as an excuse to destroy Thanksgiving by lining up at their Temple of Consumerism this Thursday. Personally, I pledge to call any friend, family member or acquaintance who goes shopping this Thanksgiving, a “brainwashed asshole.”  Those words.  I’m going to say, “you did what Thanksgiving?  You went shopping for Christmas presents on Thanksgiving because of the great sale?  You are a brainwashed asshole.”

And then I’ll say, “but no hard feelings, merry Christmas!”