By Riley Heffernan
Reporter
Every November, American families come together to celebrate perhaps the most important holiday regarding our national culture: Black Friday.
In the past, the U.S. would customarily celebrate “Thanksgiving” the day before this most sacred holiday.
But now, thanks to our capitalist, consumerist culture of greed, the annoyance of Thanksgiving can be gently pushed aside with Black Friday sales beginning at 6 p.m. Thanksgiving Day.
What a convenience.
No need to waste time on idle chit-chat with the family— once we’re done gorging ourselves on the traditional Thanksgiving feast, we can skip over the part where we’re thankful for what we’ve already got and get right down to what matters: buying more stuff.
This Thanksgiving, my family, congregated around a normative turkey-gravy-potato-cranberry-vegetable dinner at about 2 p.m. By 6 p.m. the kitchen was clean, the grandparents have shuffled along back to their retirement home.
I, on the other hand, was decked out in riot gear ready to eliminate any obstacle standing between me and my new pleather massage chair.
I didn’t know I needed a massage chair, but I knew once I saw it at 75 percent off, not even the sanctity of human life was going to hold me back.
For a moment I paused while admiring myself in the mirror, dressed in combat boots, a bulletproof vest, and barricade shield. I had a brief, yet jarring moment of self-awareness. What have I become?
Flashback to elementary school, reading about the origin of Thanksgiving, the dead of November, long past harvest season, starving pilgrims eating food provided by friendly Native Americans, Native Americans teaching us how to live on the inhospitable East coast of North America.
And then, smallpox blankets. The Trail of Tears. Genocide. The XL Pipeline.
Thanksgiving Day has become nothing more than a compulsory annual dinner during which the only thing paramount to gluttony is greed.
We may eat until we induce a diabetic coma, but you’d better believe that when Black Friday sales roll around we will rouse ourselves from slumber and fight tooth and nail for whatever material thing is marked down the most.
Do you really think the manufacturer is losing money by selling this at a quarter of its original value?
No.
The manufacturer will still make money from this transaction, and you’ll lose space in your garage because that’s where that massage chair is going to die.
So why is it that I saw “75 percent off”, instead of “This Thing Is Usually Marked Up At Least 75 Percent More Than It’s Worth, For 364 Days of The Year?” How exactly is this a “bargain?” Has my selfish lust for things blinded me to the fact that I’m being played?
We’re all being fooled at the hands of the corporate conglomerates that sell us televisions and massage chairs. It’s impossible to convince every consumer in the United States to stop shopping Black Friday, but in the words of DJ Khaled, “Stay away from they” because you all played yourself.
