“Look, Charlie, let’s face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a big Eastern syndicate, you know.”
– Lucy Van Pelt, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
In a sign of how pervasive the marketing/merchandising/retail portion of our lives has become, the Friday after Thanksgiving is now officially Black Friday, bearing a designation that was once reserved for financial crises and other tragedies. The irony that one of this country’s biggest annual shopping days is known as a Black day is not lost here, nor is the fact that Black Friday was originally so named because of the flood of traffic carrying shoppers to the malls and shopping centers.
But the idea of having the holiday season kick off with a Black Friday runs counter to the whole point of the holidays. It’s not just the fact that this time of the year should be about a little more than shopping. Shelving any questions about the “real meaning” of the holidays for a moment, the frenzy of shopping that takes place on Black Friday is a little disturbing. The kind of behavior it encourages – rising long before the sun even thinks about cracking the horizon, rushing to join lines of fellow grumpy and just-awakened souls looking for elusive bargains and fighting with shoppers over sale items (although there was little of that reported this year) all seem a little … creepy.
And while we here at the Dutchess Beat have nothing against bargain shopping, there has to be a better way than the pack behavior energized by Black Friday retailers and sales flyers. The spirit of the season, at the very least, is about love and giving, not ripping flat-screen TVs out of the hands and carts of fellow shoppers.
So without sounding too sentimental, something like what’s taking place at Barnes and Noble in Poughkeepsie this weekend seems like a step back in the right direction. On Sunday, Dec. 2, the bookstore will be hosting Poughkeepsie Library District Day, donating up to 20 percent of some sales to Poughkeepsie’s libraries. Customers will be able to present a voucher, available inside the store, to cashiers to help the library district’s fundraising efforts. The library will also be presenting a number of special programs at Barnes and Noble in the hopes of drawing customers to the store.
The bookstore’s decision to commit to the fundraiser during a December weekend is a breath of fresh air in the commercialized holiday environment. Call it “shopping with a conscience” if you must, but any reminder that the holidays are about more than shopping is welcome, as far as we’re concerned.
So even if you’re not out helping our local libraries this weekend, put some shopping time aside to think about what the holidays are for. Even Charlie Brown knew the value in that.