Labels that say a lot about us
Like you, I was bombarded with labels this week. It seemed almost every day had its own unique designation, several of which were unfamiliar. There was, “Blackout Wednesday,” “Black Friday,” “Cyber Monday,” and “Giving Tuesday.” In the middle of it all, for our American friends, there was of course, Thanksgiving.
A quick internet search revealed that “Blackout Wednesday” is a pejorative term to describe the night before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. It is associated with binge drinking since very few people work on Thanksgiving.
Apparently, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is one of the heaviest drinking evenings of the year.
Black Friday is pure commercialism. It originally was named as the day when retailers would finally begin turning a profit for the year.In accounting terms, operating at a loss was referred to as being “in the red" so Black Friday symbolically became the day the ink turned color, from red to black, loss to profit.
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. It was created by retailers to encourage people to shop online. Does it work? According to Fortune, Amazon had its biggest shopping day in history on Monday and made Jeff Bezos a cool $6.28 billion richer. Sounds to me like it works. Giving Tuesday, often stylized as #GivingTuesday for purposes of hashtag activism, refers to the Tuesday after U.S. Thanksgiving. It is a movement to create an international day of charitable giving at the beginning of the Christmas and holiday season. It is to celebrate and motivate generosity and volunteerism. It is also designed, not by accident, to capitalize on the guilt of people who got all caught up in the consumerism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Step back for a moment. What do these labels say about us? If you were an historian writing one hundred years from now about early 21st century civilization and came across these designations, what conclusions would you draw?
At a time when there is more insight, reflection and questioning than ever before it is remarkable that most of the labels of the past week describe one of the most superficial cultures in history. One would have thought the aging Boomer generation would be past a mindset of hyper-consumerism and that subsequent generations would by now have learned from our shallowness. Apparently there is still more ground to be gained.
At the risk of using yet one more label, it appears that we suffer from a values identity crisis.We have not quite figured out what ultimately matters and what matters not so much.
One day Jesus of Nazareth was dealing with a crowd in which a bunch of them were trying to figure out what was worth giving their lives to. He summarized it in one short, pithy question: “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”
Much of the past week has been focused on accumulating more and more stuff. Maybe someday there’ll be a week carrying the labels, “Loving Wednesday,” “Sharing Friday,” “Helping Monday,” and “Grateful Tuesday.”
Tim Schroeder is a pastor at Trinity Baptist Church and chaplain to the Kelowna Rockets and RCMP.