Friday Photo

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! Here is a photo I took this summer of Macy's in New York City (the largest store in the world). We went into the store, which plays a prominent role in holiday traditions this time of year, but this picture is the view of the store from the Empire State Building. This year, this Macy's location opened at midnight for "Black Friday" for the first time. It seems that with each year the shopping part of the season becomes more and more the reason for the season. As if it was not bad enough, a shopper at a Walmart pepper sprayed other shoppers just so she could get the electronics she was wanting to buy at cheap prices. Apparently she forgot that even though pepper spray has been banned in warfare it is only supposed to be used on peaceful protesters! Is pepper spraying other shoppers what this season has come to? Guess we need an "Occupy Christmas" effort to stop this dangerous consumerism. The annual "Buy Nothing Day" does not seem to go far enough (even though it was popularized by Adbusters, the same magazine that sparked the "Occupy Wallstreet" movement). Simply avoiding the commercialization of Christmas for one day does not seem to be enough. The pepper spraying incident suggests we need to completely recapture the purpose of Christmas.