Unashamed...

... I am a Black Friday shopper.

As a previous small town, small business owner, I completely understand the desire to shop locally and support my neighbors.  As a very materialistic person who has been intentionally working my way toward a more minimalistic lifestyle, for years, I completely understand the importance of emphasizing the real meaning of Christmas... ya know, the birth of our Savior... over the number of packages crammed under the tree.  But here's the truth.  I like buying things for people, I believe in being a good steward of my resources, and I don't have an exorbitant amount of cash.  So, for years, I have shopped on Black Friday.
  
What I was never going to do was shopping on Thanksgiving.  And yet, when dinner had been consumed, and the game had finished up, and the kids were happily laying around Grandma and Grandpa's living room in pie induced semi-comatose bliss, it occurred to me that Phil and I could, indeed, slip away for a couple of hours, alone, and snag some deals.  And so we did.

It should be abundantly clear

that I love this more than Phil does,

but he's such a trooper, and we do have fun together:

 

So we walked into Wal-Mart for three items.  21 minutes after the clock struck 6:00, I was sitting in the van, in the parking lot, with two of them.  Phil had a little bit more trouble getting to the check-out lanes, so it took him about 40 minutes total.  It was the easiest holiday shopping trip ever as far as I'm concerned, and I even got to direct some brand new Black Friday shoppers and help them to get the items they were after.  Yeah, that might have been the control freak in me coming out, but it is kind of fun when you're walking to the end of the check out line and people are thanking you as you go past...

L.

PS  We also did a lot of on-line shopping, so our list had dwindled, considerably, before we ever left the house.  I would imagine it would have been a bit more hectic if we were vying for electronics, which we have done in the past...

An Assessment...

... Of Black Friday...

So, I am kind of tired of hearing people talk about how evil it is to go shopping on Black Friday. I mean... really... shame on all of us who hit the stores yesterday at 3am. Clearly, all we were thinking about was our need for more and more stuff and how the best way to pursue the American Dream is by diving in... head first... to consumerism and greed! Yeah... that's definitely what I was concerned about when the alarm went off after my luxurious THREE hours of sleep!

Ya know what I was really thinking about? A couple of things...

First, I was excited to have a whole day to spend with my family. It doesn't happen nearly as often as we might like. When my 8 year old daughter greeted me... fully awake... when I came to her door at 2am, I knew she was excited, too. When my 9 year old son (who usually takes hours to get dressed in the morning) followed us down the stairs, fully clothed and ready to go, it hit me that he was looking forward to the day. And when my sleepy 5 year old son finally opened his eyes and processed what was going on, he shouted, "Yeah! it's Black Friday". They were all, of course, thinking about the hundreds upon hundreds of dollars that they had in their little pockets to spend on themselves, right?

Also... I love giving gifts. I am well aware of the true meaning of Christmas. I'm not in it to get everything I can out of it. But come on... let's not be so pious that we forget that Christmas is about God's gift to us and that we can celebrate that gift by sharing with others. We can celebrate it in a whole lot of other ways too... and our family does... but we like to give gifts! We, however, are not made of money. Black Friday sales are most often very, very good. I have actually read different things that people have written this week about how you can get the same deals for weeks on end. Although some stores offer the same deals, most do not. Further the deals that these people are talking about usually involve the high ticket items, and we don't exactly have the cash flow to buy big screen TVs and laptops for everyone on our list. The $5.00 kind of deals... those you basically only get on Black Friday (with a couple of notable exceptions). So if you have a lot of family who you want to send gifts to, Black Friday is just economically smart.

We stood in line at Meijer for two hours (basically without complaint) to purchase Wii systems. I would like to mention that as far as our children know, we just purchased a Wii for the firehouse. They were willing to stand there (or sit in shopping carts as the case may be) for the right to purchase something for someone else. In the end, Phil got his Wii, and I picked mine up behind him (for our family), but the kids had no idea that this happened. I would say that's pretty selfless on their part. However, their extreme cuteness, and Seth's ingenuity (he found a way to sit kinda underneath the cart) did earn Seth and Caleb a photo spot on the front page of our local paper! I think the experience taught them something about the virtue of patience, the willingness to do something that doesn't benefit us directly, and the reward that is often a nice surprise at the end.

Were there nasty people out yesterday morning, pushing and shoving and taking things out of other people's hands and carts? Uh-huh... Were there irritable store team members and rude customers? Uh-huh... But come on... These people are everywhere, all the time! Mostly I observed friendly people looking to catch a break at the holidays and capable staff, taking pride in their jobs!

So are Black Friday... or it's participants... worthy of reprimand? I guess you can be the judge on that one to your heart's content. As for me... shopping till you drop isn't all that bad. Especially when everyone in the house is asleep for the night by 5:30!

Lisa