SEATTLE, Washington – Area retailers called the first day of the Christmas shopping season, or Black Friday, a ‘madhouse’ and were relieved to hear that there were only 49 shopping-related fatalities this year, far bellow body-count predictions. “With less than 50 deaths you can’t call it a massacre so it was worth it as far as sales figures go,” reported one Alderwood Mall employee adding, “What really got massacred was our inventory. It was a beautiful day.”
Other areas of the country had less peaceful conditions at their shopping centers. At the D & M Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah desperate shoppers disguised as elves opened fire on a group of 30 department stores clerks, killing them all and making off with the store’s entire supply of HALO Xbox games. A spokesperson for the department store said that the marauding elves had “shot themselves in the foot” because they would not be eligible for the $25 mail-in rebate on the HALO games. The spokesperson was killed later in the day when an improvised explosive device (IED) concealed inside a giant candy cane was detonated near his desk.
So I made up some of this but the part about the shopping scene described as a ‘madhouse’ was on the front page of today’s Seattle paper. Without the presence of heavily-armed National Guard troops the situation at area malls could very well have turned into a bloodbath.
Christmas shopping is the most important time of the year for retailers, as you will hear about a thousand fucking times between now and the end of the holidays. You will listen to a parade of economists explaining the need for a huge shopping season in order that the United States of America shall not perish from this earth. They will say in so many words that if you don’t shop, we will all die. It is as if our entire economic system, or our entire way of life is based on the Christmas shopping season. It is like how people in pagan cultures would pray for bountiful crops. I have heard these economic prayers every year of my life.
What you never hear is the flip side to the shopping coin. What benefit is there to the individual and to society if someone chooses not to shop? Surely there must be some advantage to consumers for living within their means, of not over-extending themselves at Christmas, of not maxing out credit cards to be paid back at 18% interest, of actually SAVING money during the holidays instead of going bankrupt. You never hear these stories in the news; all you hear is how well or how poorly the shopping season is going.
The next time you hear some retailer talking about how desperately important the X-mass shopping season is to our economy think about where a lot of those dollars are going. If you think the people at Wal-mart give a shit about the U.S. economy you haven’t been looking at where most of their inventory is manufactured. With its utter dependence on Chinese manufacturers and plans for 1,000 retail stores in China, Wal-mart sees America as merely a quaint little colony in its vast imperial realm. What is good for Wall-mart is not necessarily good for America; many would argue that Wal-mart is bad for America.
Wal-mart is one of the country’s biggest employers but most of its jobs are low paying and offer little in the way of benefits, so a dismal holiday shopping season would mean a loss of jobs we can probably live without.
If you hear that this shopping season isn’t setting any records you can find solace in the thought that many consumers are choosing to pay off debts rather than falling deeper in the hole...or maybe they just have something better to do than shop.
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