Happy birthday, boyshapedbox

...and many happy returns of the day.

Black Friday

In the United States, the day after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday", in reference to the onslaught of the Christmas buying season. There have been many words written over the last 50 years about the increasing commercialisation of Christmas, originally only the commemmoration of the birth of Christ, with the gifts coming on Epiphany (when the Three Kings brought some for the infant Jesus). I could not count the number of sermons I've heard over the last 50 years which try to get us to "put Christ back in Christmas". And then, you see what consumerism and the frenzied search for a bargain has wrought in Lond Island. I am nearly physically ill after hearing of this.

I know that none of my (very few) readers are the kind of person who would trample over a defenseless person to save $20 on a vacuum cleaner. I know that. And yet, when a crowd gathers, with one purpose, sometimes courtesy, common sense, and even humanity seem to be absent.

The final paragraph of that NY Daily News story is: "I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"

The simple pleasure of buying something for your kids or your spouse or your friends to signify the great gift that God has given to us, his only Son, has turned into a stampede to buy as much as you can in the hope that you'll get things before everyone else can get them.

I am ill.

Wake up, everyone! Christmas has turned into something that has nothing to do with the birth and the gifts that inspired the holiday. Time to stop. Think!