Just Friday

This is how old I am:

On Wednesday afternoon I realized that I had forgotten to pick up a journal I needed for a Thanksgiving project.  Luckily the only store I live near is Office Depot, and it would do the trick.  Here’s where my age kicks in: I had a flicker of doubt, will they have closed early for the holiday or might I still be able to run in and get that journal?  The thought didn’t even have a chance to complete itself before the sheer ridiculousness of it knocked me back to reality.

Close early for a holiday?  In America?  In 2014?

HA! HA! HA!

A few minutes later I pulled up to the store and was greeted by a sign assuring me that they would be open on Thanksgiving at 4 pm.  Just in time for dinner.

It’s official: We’ve turned Thanksgiving into an elitist holiday.

When I saw Old Navy ads luring people away from their families in the hopes of winning $1,000,000 on Thanksgiving, I planned to boycott them.  But let’s get real, too many retailers were open on Thanksgiving and too many media outlets covered them; it would be next to impossible to vote against all of them with my meager dollars.  I would have to be very rich to avoid the big box stores altogether, which brings me back to my point about how Thanksgiving has become elitist.

The majority of the working poor are employed in the service industry, so their choice is to work the holiday or lose their job.  The most common job in America is retail salesperson and the second is cashier.  For their families Thanksgiving is gone.  I’m sure some families are clever and work out an alternate time for a feast, but it’s not the same.  Those families don’t get to sit down at the same time as the rest of the country.  Those millions of people are excluded from our collective celebration.

The truth is, that hurts.

It is degrading to have to work a crappy job for crappy pay, and then have even your holiday taken away.  It begs the question, why aren’t those people considered important?  Why don’t their families matter?  What are we grateful for if all we can think to do after consuming a gluttonous feast is rush out to buy more?

Thanksgiving has become a feast for the haves and a workday for the havenots, a division driving classes further apart, a chasm into which I fear our country will never recover.

Sure you can call today black, but Thursday was even darker.