Shopping with a Vengeance
Maybe it’s from working many years as a paper boy, throwing copies of the Oregonian up onto people porches at the week hours of the morning. I had to fold the papers, all 70 of them, and then put them into my paper bags, which were slung over the handle bars of my Sting-Ray, and then pedal out to my route, throwing the papers on the porches like Frisbees. I was one good shot, if I do say so myself, and had very few broken windows and screen doors to my credit. But back to the “paper shack,” where I would fold the papers. I saw each paper’s headlines, all seventy papers bearing the same headline, and so learned about what was important or not to our culture—at least on that particular (news) day. I grew up viewing daily headlines that screamed out “S. Vietnam government strong says ambassador,” “S. Vietnam government in “desperate circumstances,” and “S. Vietnam government collapses to Communist forces,” etc. People were dying in a far away place called Vietnam, and we cared about it, so everyday’s newspaper told us of the news there. Of course, there was also headlines that screamed things like, “RFK shot in LA,” “Malcolm X shot,” Nixon Resigns,” etc.
I’m not a paper boy anymore.
Now I’m a pastor. I get my headlines most often from the AOL start-up page that comes up when I turn on my computer. Today’s start-up page really reached out and grabbed me, not for sake of the content of three of its headlines, but the fact that all three appeared on the same start-up page, one after the other. (There was also a fourth headline, “Gifts for Those You Love to Hate,” if you’re interested in learning how to appear to be generous and loving while maintaining a deeply held animosity and disdain for…family, I guess!)
Headline Number One: “Lines at Mall Look Painful—Bypass the Black Friday mobs but Still Save 50% at Best Buy: Online Steals
That’s nice; they don’t want me to waste my valuable time standing in lines, so I can shop online. Click, click, click—and Tommy gets his game-boy. Click, click, click, and my sister can have a gift card for her favorite store, and if she doesn’t want to physically go to the store, no problem, they’re online, she can shop from home! Click, click, click. May be less personal, but (as the following headlines will reveal) may be safer.
Headline Number Three: “Doorbuster Secrets”
This article if chock full of helpful hints for those Proverbs 31 type gals out there who rise up early to…shop. The article reads, “Don’t even suggest to Patty Corn that she spend the day after Thanksgiving recovering from the family feast. Every year, before the first glimmer of Black Friday dawn, the Allendale, NJ, mother of five is out the door just after 3:30 AM. With her two sisters and a supply of coffee, water and gum she’s off to the door-buster wars, which she attacks with military precision…
“Attacks…military precision…” Keep those words in mind, for in between these two articles is one that presents a story that really had to be told (it is big news) and yet didn’t rate trumping the ad space that Best Buy had apparently purchased from AOL. Military precision is actually a pretty decent description of the way some shoppers conducted their campaign at a Long Island, New York suburb.
It’s the second headline that grabbed me this morning: “Wal-Mart Worker Trampled to Death—Shoppers “Broke Down the Doors””
As I write, the article itself was posted only “38 minutes ago,” and so we can only pray that it is not true that a Wal-Mart worker was actually crushed to death by a mob of….shoppers?! I wonder if it was done with “military precision.” No, the precision of the military usually is such that the soldiers at least try to kill enemies, and not innocents (I’m talking usually, here), particularly not employees who are trying to do their job. This employee’s life was taken from him for…a better deal on a flat screen TV? A digital cameral? A $10 dollar Crock-Pot? Subsequent reports have confirmed that the worst is true: With almost military precision, in which an initial shock-blow was delivered (the doors of the Wal-Mart were broken down), followed by a human wave, perhaps armed with coffee, water, and gum, who then dispersed with military precision down the various rows of the store, each with his or her plan of attack memorized, a man from Queens really was crushed to death by a crowd of bargain hunters. “Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store. When told to leave, they complained that they had been in line since Thursday morning.”
God help us. The season of sacrifice, love, and self-denial is now inaugurated yearly by a day called “Black Friday.” May we keep our eyes, and our wallets, firmly fixed, with “military precision,” on the holy Child of Christmas, the One that marketer, salesman, and shopper alike would rip from our hands. In His place, they’ve left a coupon for a 40% discount on Tupperware, televisions, video games, and they’ve even opened up the shop early so we can get the operation going good and early, and get home to our families and leftovers. More gifts for more people, at better prices, and (at least) for one family in New York, one less place to set at the table this Christmas.
When I was a paramedic, one of the more unpleasant, but necessary parts of my job at the end of the day was to be sure that my boots were clean of blood, grime, and any of the other products of trauma and death that I may have stepped in throughout the shift. Sometimes I had to hose my boots off before leaving them in the mudroom. I didn’t say much to my kids about it—it was just something that had to be done because of the near military-type carnage that I routinely saw in that profession. Perhaps this Christmas season, some of our shoppers will need to make a similar stop at the garden hose, and then through the mud room, on their way to the Christmas tree where their families await with faces aglow, and hands outstretched for…
God help us, we need the Child, and not the toys.
