Black Friday and all that stuff

I really hate Black Friday.  It isn't anything against the day itself.  It is more the pictures that are played out in front of our eyes of people camping out in line and then throngs of people fighting over some kind of amazing deal.  There must be something to this but I just don't get it.

There was a news story of a Mom and her two daughters who loaded up in the car after Thanksgiving dinner so they could get in a motorcade lineup to get into a mall parking lot that was locked up until 10pm.  They waited in their car for three hours before being allowed to pull into the parking lot and enter the Mall.  They were all smiles and said it was a great chance for them to bond spending three hours in the car.

It makes me sort of sad.

It sort of starts out the holiday season with everything that is wrong about the holiday.  It starts out the holiday reinforcing that the holiday is only about stuff.  Undoubtedly, many of the items being purchased on Black Friday are not for a gift item at all but it still doesn't make it any better.  The mob scene is a bit horrifying.  What are we teaching our kids.  That stuff is more important than time together.  The same people who mob over a $50 savings turn right around and spend that $50 on some other unnecessary item the very next week totally evaporating all of their savings or any reason for being part of the mob on Black Friday.

So, if you were one of the very large number of people that went out and rushed the stores for a great deal on this Black Friday I certainly do not mean any disrespect.  I just don't get it.

Perhaps it is because I had a family member in the hospital this year and I wasn't thinking about his stuff.  Or perhaps it is because my Mother-in-Law passed away last year and we are left only with all of her stuff. But the truth is we really don't want any of her stuff.  We just want more time with her.

I'm not even sure when I heard this advice but it had a huge influence on my life.  Someone asked me one time "Do I own my stuff OR does my stuff own me?"  I watch the show hoarders and it is hard for me to understand how it can get that bad in someones life.  At the same time I have way more stuff than I really need. So to someone else they might look at me and think "Yuck, how can she live with all that stuff in her livingroom?  I saw a woman at the airport one time with four big suitcases.  We were in line next to each other and she was in very high spirits and started talking to me.  So I asked her where she was going and she told me that she was going to Las Vegas for the weekend because one of her friends was getting married.  Four giant suitcases for the weekend?  I couldn't even imagine changing clothes that often to necessitate four giant suitcases of clothes.

Don't let your stuff own you.

Those words carry me though Black Friday.





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Comments

  1. Good post Mary. I'm with you. I mean no disrespect to those who do this, but I too don't get it for the most part. I watched a video of a WalMart and a fight breaking out over some TVs and I got a knot in my stomach and said to myself 'what have we become?' while watching these people feverishly grab these TVs like they were starving and the TVs were food packets dropped by a humanitarian aid project. Only they weren't, they were cheap TVs. Thanks for sharing on this topic. I'm definitely making sure my stuff doesn't own me...

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