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Holiday Shopping

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Back in September, Barataria speculated that this could wind up being a great holiday shopping season. That was before the shutdown and awfully early in the year to be sure of anything. A month later, the pros are weighing in on holiday sales and the predictions are generally all over the board. Growth of between 2.3% and 4.5% over 2012 is predicted by an array of professional organizations, so you can take your own guess.

This is important for retail outlets, where holiday sales amount to about 20% of annual sales. It’s practically a “fifth quarter,” and a very key part of the US Economy. A good holiday season should accelerate job growth and set up even more in 2014. So, once again we ask, “How good will it be?”

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Our Promised Land

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First came God’s paradise, Eden, which mankind was kicked out of for not following instructions. After that came floods, slavery, fratricide, and a whole lotta smiting. The three great “Religions of the Book” – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – differ as to when and where it happened, but all agree that at some point God became weary of it all. Those who managed to get through it and somehow achieve Righteousness are given the charter to a Promised Land. To a surprising number of faiths that Promised Land is right here in the USofA, and the delivery of the righteous to a land of great wealth is what Thanksgiving is all about.

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Black Friday Boycott

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Black Friday is well named.  The term seems to originate with the Philadelphia Police, who in 1966 started to dread the massive disruption in traffic that put them all on overtime the day after Thanksgiving.  The massive public expense for the benefit of retailers was given the dark moniker because it was something that the city wanted to dissuade.

It’s worth noting that this was the first holiday retail season after the debut screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in December 1965, which also decried how commercialism has destroyed Christmas.

From this simpler time, things have only gotten worse.  After a few decades of tacit acceptance of the dark day, the hours have been pushed back from a 6AM start time to before midnight.  This year, Wal-Mart plans to open at 8PM on Thanksgiving Day and workers are organizing a strike that may shut the whole operation down.  The issue?  Over work, under pay – and much of the cost of low, low prices ultimately born by the public.  It’s time to put a stop to Black Friday as we know it.

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William Penn

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After the election, it’s time to remind us all what it means to be an American.  This story, first run in 2010, is very important to me personally – and to our nation.  I hope you enjoy it as we all look ahead to a great American holiday.

It naturally comes up in my family just before Thanksgiving every year.  The Puritans’ deliverance to America is billed as a search for religious freedom, something which is a core value of our nation. It’s good that we celebrate such a thing, but do the Puritans really deserve credit for it?  The short answer is no, they do not, because they were seeking to establish their own theocracy – and across the ocean where no one would bother them seemed like the perfect place.

Religious tolerance as a founding principle of America came from a different source – William Penn, the “absolute proprietor” of Pennsylvania.  The reason that he doesn’t get the credit he deserves is murky at best, but may have its origins in a prejudice that most of us wouldn’t even understand today.  I think it’s time to correct that.
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