The first time I truly experienced the glorious day after Thanksgiving sale known as Black Friday was only two years ago. I woke up at 5:00am and drove to the closest mega-discount store. Inside I found aisles packed with floor palettes of mystery items, wrapped in black plastic shrink wrap, leaving the mobs to guess at their fabulous contents. People were milling about, reading freshly published flyers and dividing up family members into strategic attack squads. Everyone was franticly checking their watches, anticipating the hour when the sale would begin. You could easily separate the veterans from the newbies. Trying my best to look experienced, I planted myself near a tower-sized palette of large boxes, hoping for something wonderful as I watched an employee talking on a hand-radio. I could tell something was about to happen. Even before he had released the Push-to-Talk button, the mob launched into a chaotic frenzy. Plastic wrap was flying everywhere. There was shouting and grabbing and polite pushing and shoving. My instinctive reaction was to whip out my cell phone and document the mad rush with a low-resolution video, possibly something I could share with my friends via the internet. Fifteen to twenty seconds later I remembered my towering palette. It was now reduced to three boxes. And in those three boxes were $64 TV’s. SIXTY-FOUR DOLLARS FOR A TV! I reached for a box and I lost my prize to a grandma who had to be in her 70’s. Fortunately, I was able to grab the second to last box on the palette. I found a cart to push around my new best friend as I perused the other sales. Half an hour later, I was still pushing around the TV. I began to realize that I didn’t need another TV, no matter how cheap it was, and that it was ridiculous for me to be pushing this cart around. I tried selling my unpurchased TV to a couple of college students for $10. I was thinking, “$74 for a TV, that’s still a killer deal!” No luck. I wheeled my cart back to the palette where I found it. By now a second load of fresh TV’s had been brought out and emptied. I sighed as I put my impulse buy back where I had found it and left the store, glad that I had saved my $64, and knowing that I had experienced a wonderful adventure.
Each family has their own holiday traditions. For some, it’s a special meal cooked with ancient heirloom recipes, for others, it’s a gift exchange or extended family get-togethers. As a young family, we are still shaping our annual Holiday traditions. Every year is a chance to evaluate last year’s events and choose to repeat them or to try something new. It’s never too late to start a new family tradition.
Gather your family and have a discussion about what kind of things you enjoy doing together. Which traditions are meaningful and rich and should never be changed (like grandma’s green been casserole )? What kind of new family activity would you like to try this year? Maybe you’d like to synchronize your watches for 0500 hours and form attack squad for Black Friday. Maybe you’d like to visit your nearest Feed My Starving Children facility and pack meals for the hungry together. Maybe you’d like to designate some family shopping time for gifts to the poor.
Faith is more often something you catch rather than something you learn. This holiday season, find activates that bring your family together so that faith can be shared through your stories and your adventures. It doesn’t have to be quiet and candlelit, and it doesn’t need to be expensive or have a high entertainment value. It does have to be meaningful and full of conversation. Talk to the ones you love and find out what is meaningful to them as we approach the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child.
