The front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday had a big headline: Culprit in early store hours? Their conclusion? The Internet, of course. It's online, always open shopping. That's whose fault it is. Yes, we say, satisfied.
How about this? It's our fault. Not the stores, not the Internet, us. To paraphrase Billie Dawn (in the original Born Yesterday), if a building is in flames and nobody calls 911 until it burns to the ground, who you gonna to blame, the fire? Stores open earlier for one reason only; we want to go and shop.
Yes, the holiday spirit (okay Fox News, the Christmas spirit) has become so pervasive that people need to go shopping, ostensibly for presents, on Thanksgiving Day. To hell with hanging out with family and friends, being thankful for our many blessings, and having some plain old relaxing time. We need to shop!
Crass commercialization doesn't get more crass or commercial. No holiday matters except for its purchasing patterns. We can throw blame around wherever we want. The secular humanists, Jesus, the stores that open early, the Internet, climate change. Whatever you say. But we all know, deep down, that this is wrong and we feel guilty about it. Otherwise, nobody would be writing about it.
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