Happy Holidaze

Holiday: comes from "Holy Day," a day set aside for special religious observance.

Religion: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.

And so it starts, the great Holiday Season. Two major world religions hold warm and cozy-feeling holidays in the next month. (There may be an irony that the happy, perky, bouncy-type Christian, the one most likely to hold to text in the Bible as literal and perfect, is also the one most likely to have "Happy Birthday, Jesus" tchotchkes, despite the fact that "shepherds watching their flocks by night" happens in the spring, not in December. Christmas is in December to provide a return-of-the-light festival in the darkest week of winter — a common theme in many religions — but that's perhaps another topic altogether.) Part of being warm and cozy is being with people you love — and giving them things. Expensive things. Or so we'd have you believe.

See, the trouble with modern capitalism (in my opinion) is that most large companies have reached the end of physically expanding into new loctions (i.e., opening more stores), and now must increase revenues by getting the existing customer to spend more. If a retailer's profits aren't growing year over year, their stock suffers.

During the last year, we have been regaled with messages implying that it's our national, civic duty to spend ourselves into debt. If the economy falters, the very notion of capitalism itself might be at risk! Buy now!

This is even more apparent today, "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, the "traditional start of the holiday shopping season." Retailers' stocks hang in the balance as the analysts determine, based on shopping traffic today, how well the stores will perform over the next month. In response, the retailers try to create a sense of urgency by offering the $5-coffee-maker-or-toaster kind of sales today, or even better, the extra-discount-if-you-shop-before-dawn deals — the retailer hopes that once you're there, you'll drop a week's wages on higher-profit, "impulse" shopping.

In fact, one could even go the next step and claim that most retailers are closed on Thanksgiving Day, not to allow employees time off with their families, but rather to create a day's worth of pent-up demand and to help maintain the mystique of shopping on Black Friday. One can see it in advertising at other times of the year: "we're closed today to prepare for our MEGA HUGE SALE tomorrow."

Commercial America taps into that warm and cozy holiday in a big way. "Wouldn't you love to see the look on her face when she opens the box to find a diamond necklace? And we have just the necklace that will do it. You'll be doing so much good for her, and for yourself [and, implied, for our bottom line]."

I sincerely doubt that any corporate business closed yesterday does it out of the goodness of their heart, or because it's the "right thing to do." Any company that does the "right thing" does it because somewhere, someone showed a measurable financial advantage to doing so. The grocery stores closed yesterday (admittedly odd, since it's a holiday that's all about the food) probably were closed because the Home Office realized the last-minute shoppers weren't enough in number to justify the holiday pay / overtime. The national pasta and seafood chain that was closed probably doesn't have the proper kitchen equipment to prepare Thanksgiving turkey, so why bother opening?

Case in point: My own company's "business case for diversity" includes a statement that future growth will require developing visitation from "non-traditional markets." It's not because respecting everyone's differences is the right thing to do — doing so is the only way we can make more money. Don't kid yourself — no company is in business with an altruistic goal. Every positive-sounding decision has a dark financial underbelly.

Given the definitions of "holiday" and "religion" cited above (thank you, Merriam-Webster), perhaps today is the quintessential American National Holiday. As a nation, we hold that greed is good, and excess is acceptable. If you don't shop, if you don't take today off (as I didn't), if you don't mail your Christmas cards and be done shopping by next Monday, there is something clearly wrong with you. You're either a goofball or a dangerously free-sprit thinker, falling outside our established "system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith." Maybe today, then, should be declared a paid national holiday, so more of us can be free to celebrate our national right to need.*

*Of course, the irony is, that for anyone to shop, someone has to work the store.