"You can get anything you want..."

"Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life."

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Thanksgiving has, for me, always been a time of reflection. I can look back at the year almost done and see what I've accomplished and prepare myself to attack what still needs to be done with a renewed vigor.

 

I can realize that despite my many failings over the previous 11 months, that I still have plenty to be thankful for: a happy, healthy family, home, job, the means to get between the two; friends who can make me laugh, provide a sounding board for my story ideas, bear my illogical rants and pretend my jokes are funny.

 

It's also a time when most of us can say: it's okay to slow down and take that time to reflect. Most of the world shuts down on Thanksgiving Day so we can all get reacquainted with the family members we don't see often enough as we eat too much and watch the Detroit Lions lose. Or it used to be, anyway. Nowadays, too many of us are looking at the clock when the turkey is pulled from the oven and the knives are sharpened—because Thanksgiving is also the traditional start to the holiday shopping season, and that season is starting earlier and earlier.

 

I've never been a part of the 'Black Friday' crowds. I've never even felt compelled to get out of bed at 4 a.m. to do much of anything—let alone push my way through throngs of sleep-deprived people battling for a cheap television. Watching those sales creep ever forward, from 5 a.m. to 4 a.m. Friday morning to 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day itself makes me wonder about the priorities we have as a society, and how we are allowing corporations to carve away the sanctity of family for the sake of a few bucks. Black Friday is morphing into Gray Thursday and that makes me feel a little blue. What's next? Turkey carts to serve shoppers as they wait outside the stores?

 

Are we really that desperate for a good deal? Is the economy in such bad shape that these stores need this time to shore up their bottom lines? On both accounts, I hope not.

 

Still, this is something we can only lament and cannot change. To change it, we'd have to change ourselves. We'd have to resist the pull of the good deal—at least for a few more hours—and realize that family is indeed more important. We'd have to stay away from those stores to show them that it's not worth their while to open up that early, to send a message that their employees' time would be better spent at home cooking, eating, talking and laughing. We need to show corporate America that they should put people ahead of profit.