We only have so many holidays that are still considered special, the kind of holidays that were at one time meaningful enough to warrant a day off for most of us. Thanksgiving and Christmas as far as I have been concerned were the untouchable holidays, unless you happened to work in a hospital or convenience store you just expected to have the big holidays off… That is about to change…
The local news channels have been running a story about how Wal-Mart is going to stay open on Thanksgiving this year, and not only stay open, but they will be having their biggest sale of the year starting at 8pm. I don’t know about you, but at 8pm on Thanksgiving I am usually in an alcohol and turkey induced coma. The last place on planet earth that I want to be on Thanksgiving is Wal-Mart, imagine if you had to work their.
Every human being deserves time off, and we all need time to de-compress… Even our prisoners get time to relax in the yard… Art has taught me that the empty space in a piece of artwork is just as important as the filled space, occasionally it is more important. If we were to step back and take a look at our life like it was a painting, and the painted sections represent the time we spend working, and the empty space represents relaxation… The painting should have some empty space… Shouldn’t it?
It is important to remember that the blank space in artwork does not always represent “nothing”, sometimes it represents everything… In life it represents the future… The art we have yet to create… The stories we will paint in the future… We not only deserve this “free” time in our lives, we require it… Blank space is not only a part of art, it is an important part of life…
Now I am not stupid… And although i was apparently born yesterday… It sure as shit wasn’t last night… I am aware that me posting this won’t stop Wal-Mart from having this sale, and all too many Wal-Mart employees can’t afford to lose their jobs… People have families… And any employees that do protest and quit will quickly be replaced… They may not have the choice to work, but we have the choice to shop.
This kind of protest will only happen if the consumers are on board, employees are replaceable… but we the consumers… we my friends, are irreplaceable… Ask the people who brought you “pink slime” about that one… Sometimes we have to stand up for the things we believe in, even though this does not affect you now… This kind of thing just starts at a company like Wal-Mart, and then spreads through all the other companies. Sooner or later Thanksgiving will just be another Thursday, we will all work like it is just any other day.
So here is what I am proposing… Stay away from Wal-Mart or any other “Black Friday” sale until “Black Friday”, If we financially support this “war” on our holidays then we will lose them all. The people who are making this call will not be working Thanksgiving, they will be home with their families enjoying the festivities… while our friends, family and neighbors work away preparing for the grotesque display of consumerism that “we” the consumer created, and that only “we” the consumer have the power to stop!
What about Christmas? What will happen when they have a giant sale Christmas morning? What about a 7 day work week while we are at it… Vacations, who needs them… I’ll tell you who needs them… We do…
fight for the right to be human – chriscondello
I am interested to hear what you think, do you think holidays should be sacred? Are you a black friday shopper? Do you care about this at all, or is it just another day like any other?
I am not sure who to give credit for the painting… If you know please tell me so I can properly credit them…
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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