Black, blackness, darkness all have been used by edgy groups to show their disdain for the light and to make it a point that they are of a darker mindset. Personally I am quite drawn to darker art, gothic artists and melancholy images but they do bring a feeling of loneliness and despair. Loneliness and despair are hardly words I would think businesses would want to associate themselves with, especially during the Christmas season. I know it has little to do with the color and more to do with turning a profit, but still.
And the darkness is coming earlier and earlier each year. I recently heard about a big box store announcing that their Black Friday deals were going to start around dinner time on Thanksgiving, I find so much wrong with that. We are already dealing with Christmas decorations and end caps making their appearance while the ghosts and goblins of halloween are just being moved to the clearance bins. There is little talk of Thanksgiving and it seems there is little talk of people being thankful. And it isn't as though stores and people are rushing in to celebrate the birth of Christ; no, they just want to start buying stuff.
We aren't thankful for having the money to buy stuff or even thankful for the gifts we get and those we give. We are just a very unthankful people. And now we are skipping over a time when we should be celebrating with our families around a dinner table and are instead out looking for a good deal on something we don't need and won't really even want soon after we get it.
What if we all chose to boycott all these Black Friday deals and the commercialization of November and December? What if instead of being out buying stuff for our friends and families we instead took that time and energy and invested it in each other? How many of you would be happier to spend some quality time with a loved one instead of opening some gift that you don't really need? If memory serves me correctly, I believe that some new video game systems are hitting the stores very soon. We will leave our children at home with someone else to go out and buy them a present that will let them zone out away from you. That is all time you will never get back and conversations you will never have.
I have never done the shopping binge that is Black Friday but i have spent time away from my family, struggling to find stuff to fill in the space under the tree. But a couple of years ago I had this realization that maybe, just maybe, i was doing it all wrong. Being a single dad makes you watch your money but it also makes you see how much the kids really value your time. It would be easier to do my own thing and throw presents at them often to try to "show" my love and that may work for awhile. But kids are not stupid and they will one day realize your true intentions. Love is not in a present or in a tangible box that you unwrap. Love is in you and it is shown by time and energy invested. It's funny when you look at Christians and the Church. We often seem to revert to the Black Friday mentality and buy our love for God. We throw some money in a plate or donate to a cause but rarely do we invest our time and energy into God and into His people. God doesn't need our money or our things, he asks for us and for our time.
A couple of years ago my gift to the kids for Christmas was a vacation to Disney World. They didn't really have anything to unwrap from me under the tree but what they did get was a full week of me spending the time with them, making memories and having conversations. In five years, or ten or twenty do you think they will remember a video game they unwrapped so many years ago or do you think they will remember the time we spent together on vacation? And boy did we spend that time. We went from the time they were up until bedtime on the go. Hitting the parks and the pool and just being together. Maybe this year, instead of buying a bunch of stuff, you could take that money and go. Go spend time together and make some memories. After all, it is the memories we will remember the most.
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