I remember when I actively realized that not everyone was
raised as I was. It was my freshman year
of college. And, to be honest, it came late.
I mean, by the time I was a freshman in college, I had studied three
languages and the cultures of those countries and traveled to the Soviet Union.
Thanks to my parents, I had traveled extensively around the country on a
variety of vacations. While my high
school was not a bastion of diversity, I certainly knew peers from different
ethnic and religious backgrounds. I don’t
remember the incident that prompted my delayed epiphany, but I distinctly
remember that I was walking down Dubuque Street in Iowa City toward Mayflower
within sight of the Iowa River.
Something clicked in my brain and I actively, cognitively thought, “Not
everyone grew up with two parents, a dog, siblings, and celebrating holidays.”
The traditions of Thanksgiving are clear: eat, watch
football, eat, be grateful, eat, see a parade, eat, hang out with family, and eat. Or at least some incarnation of this. Right?
That is what we all are meant to be doing on Thanksgiving. The next day, of course, we all go shopping
on the frighteningly monikered Black Friday.
In the past few years, there have been more and more
Thanksgiving Day Sales at stores and malls. The idea is to beat the crowds and
rush of Black Friday (not to mention fatten the wallets of corporations). This year, I am
seeing a sort of grass roots movement happening on social media that
suggests that shopping on Thanksgiving is heretical. While I am not a big box store fan and I understand there are larger issues with such corporations, I see a problem with this logic. This movement equates shopping the “big
box retailers” on Thanksgiving with enslaving the people who work at such
stores. The general thought is that if
you shop on Thanksgiving, you are forcing the employees of these stores to
work, and you are consequently ruining their holiday. This line of thought continues: if we all
band together and refuse to shop on Thanksgiving Day, then the corporate
entities that are open on this holiday will be adversely affected, see the
error of their capitalistic ways, and close their doors, allowing their
employees the day off to spend with family.
And, that is precisely what all Americans want to do on the fourth
Thursday of November, right?
The continuation of this boycott shopping-on-Thanksgiving movement
equates shopping on Thanksgiving as being against raising the minimum wage and being against unionization. And,
if you do not shop on Thanksgiving, you are somehow supporting those who are
working for minimum wage in these retail establishments. I didn’t major in
economics, but there’s a flaw in that reasoning somewhere.
Actually, I see several errors in this whole line of
thinking. The first is that by shopping
on Thanksgiving you are ruining an employee’s holiday. What I know is that the day of the holiday is
not nearly as important as how and with whom one celebrates it – if one chooses
to celebrate it at all. If a person
has to work on a holiday, it is possible to celebrate the holiday one day early
or later that evening. Folks, the
holiday doesn’t create the meaningfulness of the day – the people with whom and
the way in which you celebrate it is what counts. We can have Thanksgiving on Wednesday or
Saturday – who cares? A celebration of
gratitude and food and football can be on any day. And, those who work on holidays often do celebrate
on another day. Furthermore, not
everyone wants to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Some people are pleased to work on this day for their own reasons. It might surprise us to realize that there
are people in this country who don’t buy into the whole media-driven holiday
celebrations. There are families and individuals who
celebrate in their own ways that might be foreign to you, but meaningful for
them. There are also families and individuals who choose
not to celebrate for their own reasons, and, brace yourself, they are just as
happy and well-adjusted as those who do celebrate.
Second, many establishments are open on the
majority of holidays: hospitals, fire departments, the army, convenience stores,
and restaurants. A few years ago, the boys
and I had just moved into an apartment from a house on a large tract of
land. I did not want to make a
Thanksgiving dinner in a galley kitchen to eat at our tiny round table. I just wasn’t in the mood. So, we went to a local hotel that serves a
glorious buffet all day long, and we enjoyed a hearty Thanksgiving dinner
there. It was wonderful. I am grateful to this day for the service
that everyone involved with the production of that dinner provided. Almost 21 years ago, I had a premature baby
two days before Christmas under emergency conditions. I’m sure glad the hospitals were open and the
doctors, nurses, orderlies, and food service workers did not express that I was
ruining their holiday by being there.
Of the people that are working on Thanksgiving, I’m sure that some of
them hate it and want to be home. I’m
equally sure that some of them have rearranged their celebrations to accommodate
their work schedules, and that there are those who don’t care to celebrate any
way. If you believe that boycotting such
stores will be beneficial to the workers, you are entitled to think
this and act on it. If you believe that not shopping on Thanksgiving will make
the employees of the stores in question happier and make them feel appreciated, that’s your right as well.
How about, though, the next time you are in one of those
huge stores and can’t find what you’re looking for, you talk to an associate politely? I can think of so many of
times I’ve been in such a store, seen shoppers huffing around and looking for
assistance, then, when they finally find someone to ask the location of the
Q-tips, the shopper treats that worker like a mangy dog in an alley. Want to let the workers in these big box
stores know you appreciate their job? Be
nice. Be patient. Ask nicely and say
thank you after they help you. Here’s
another idea: when you are pushing your cart with one box of microwave popcorn
in it and an employee of such a store is pushing a giant dolly weighed down with
hundreds of 18-count cartons of eggs that he can’t see over – get out of his
way. Don’t stand there, get offended, and mutter obscenity
if you have to go around him to the next aisle.
Real meaningful ways to show appreciation and gratitude to
those who work in large retail establishments exist – and, maybe, just maybe,
those ways have nothing to do with how or when they or we celebrate November
28, 2013. Whether you are going to one
of these stores this week to buy a turkey and stuffing; or whether
you shop on Thanksgiving Day; or whether you never go the big box retailers,
remember: not everyone marks holidays in the same way or at the same time. If we all can appreciate and
understand the lives of others, we all might have a bit more happiness this
holiday season. That’s something we all can be grateful for.
