So-called "Black Friday" became much blacker this year when a Walmart employee was trampled to death by an estimated 2,000 frenzied shoppers who stormed and even broke down the store's doors upon its 5am special sales opening in Long Island, New York.
34-year-old Jdimytai Damour of Queens, New York was pronounced dead an hour later. Several of Damour's fellow workers were also trampled as they desperately tried to rescue him. During the melee, four other people, including an eight-month pregnant woman were also injured. Upon being told that the store needed to close for a while so police could investigate the death, angry shoppers yelled in protest and defied authorities by continuing their shopping.
We Americans have just lost the right to haughtily point our fingers and shake our heads in disgust at the Europeans who riot at soccer games.
Just a quick perusal turned up a three other similar incidents in recent history. Five years ago to the very day of the Long Island incident, Walmart shoppers in central Florida trampled a 41 year-old woman to the point of unconsciousness in a 2003 Black Friday stampede. On 2005's Black Friday, November 25th, a 73 year-old woman in a South Florida Walmart was also trampled and received a head injury. In another central Florida Walmart store, a fight broke out during the Black Friday stampede. While there clearly seems to be a pattern with Walmart here, in all fairness, I can't help but think that is not the only retailer experiencing these needless problems.
Yes, I said "needless." If these retailers, including Walmart, are going to advertise special Black Friday sales during only limited hours while by now fully knowing the unintended but predictable consequences, then these retailers need to provide more adequate security, and be held liable for the potentially tragic consequences, or else they should end this ludicrous practice all together, preferably by their own volition, but if need be, by enforced rule of law. But as my mother, the family sage, has always keenly noted, "It takes two to Tango."
I have studied Sociology. I understand the dynamics of herd behavior and mob mentality, as eerie as the whole concept seems. In crowds, when violence breaks out, leaders become followers, rational people become irrational people, intelligent people become idiots, monkey-see-monkey-do, and soon all Hell breaks loose, and when it's all over, nobody is really sure exactly how or why it all happened, kind of like a bad dream, times a thousand fold.
What I don't get is what happens prior to the chaos. What so strongly compels people to rise extra early out of a nice warm bed in the middle of the night, get into a cold car, and drive to a still closed store to go stand in front of it in the wee hours and late November weather elements, just to save a few bucks, and really only a few bucks, on the unofficial but generally understood first day of Christmas shopping, "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving. The name "Black Friday," according to Wikipedia, originates from a comparison to the heavy traffic noted in the streets on "Black Tuesday," the infamous day the stock market crashed in 1929. The name caught on more in the 60's and 70's and retailers have also dubbed the day "black" to mean the opposite of "red' in financial terms, in other words, profits instead of losses. But the timing of the day has even greater irony than its quirky name. Just the day before, many people were at least theoretically giving thanks (or should have been), and before dawn the next day they are trampling their fellow man to death to get some material object before him. What makes these murderous, robotic, cold-hearted shopping ghouls tick?
We've lost our way. We see more minor similarities to these insidious Black Friday stampedes now almost routinely. Young people literally camping out in sleeping bags on cold sidewalks and in snow and rain to be in line to get popular concert tickets when the box office opens up. And people young and old now stand outside in long lines hours in advance of retail stores to buy a limited but popular version of some new kid's toy for Christmas, or just about any desired video game or new electronic widget. Why? Ask any of my family members or friends what happens when I find out that a restaurant at which I have just arrived takes no reservations and has an hour or more wait: U-turn, and then, "See ya!" I don't do lines because I simply don't have the patience. But I especially don't wait for food because I don't have to. I'm blessed in that regard. I already have some at home.
I have heard it's all part of the tradition or the experience. Sorry, but I just don't love my fellow man enough to stand in the November rain for five hours jawboning with him, but OK, for some people I get the socialization aspect of it, although I still think it's a stretch. But "tradition"? No way. But can we say, "Greed"?
Too harsh? OK. "Consumerism." "Materialism" "Obsession." "Narcissism." Or how about "Pagan Worship"? Yeah, that works. Let's try that one on for size.
We are forever, and then some, not just trying to keep up with the Joneses, but continually trying to outdo them. Name your poison, be it clothes, jewelry, cars, useless excessive electronic devices, or whatever, we always seem to need more, bigger, better, shinier, glitzier, more expensive, newer, and best of all, first. For you electronic gurus, this absurdity gives you little more than bragging rights as prices on electronics typically decrease substantially after being on the market for a couple or more years. We have become addicted to the pagan god of material wealth, or put a more accurate way, a bunch of stuff, most of which we don't even really need. Picture that. Jdimytai Damour did nothing to deserve his hideous fate. All he did was be a good and productive citizen. He went to work at his job. And he was killed for his trouble. And why? For stuff. I really hope at least one of you 2,000 stampeding ghouls from that Long Island Walmart with Damour's innocent blood still fresh on the soles of your shoes is reading this column right now. Why am I so shocked and outraged? In a nation that prides itself in upholding the so-called rights to abortion and euthanasia, or in other words, killing off our youngest and oldest fellow citizens when they become too inconvenient, it shouldn't be too scandalous to trump the dignity of human life with the coveted early and cheap acquisition of stuff, right?
Beyond individuals, we now even have concerted efforts by institutions in both the private and public sectors zealously trying to remove Christ from Christmas, from the censorship of the word "Christmas" and replacing it with the intentionally vague and vacuous, "Happy Holidays," to unconstitutionally banning any and all semblance of the Nativity scene from the public square by either sheer ignorance or outright manipulation of the incessantly maligned and misunderstood concept of ‘separation of Church and State." Sadly, this faction is gaining much ground, and the early results are already vividly flowing in like vote counts from states in earlier time zones on Election Night. Even non-Christians and non-believers take some solace in Christmas, if not for the religious reason, than for the generally understood meanings of peace, love and joy that it transforms into good will and is thus perpetuated unto us and then shared with each other. Yet each year, it seems earlier and earlier, the cash registers and their retail handlers start getting itchy. In one particular big name pharmacy retailer a few years ago, I actually saw Christmas decorations go up while Halloween decorations hadn't yet come down. Halloween had only just passed and Thanksgiving was still almost a month away, and piped in Christmas carols were being played throughout the store. Had my cashier been dressed like the Easter Bunny, I would have started fearfully looking around for Rod Serling and seriously beginning to wonder if I had entered "the Twilight Zone."
Does this sound familiar: "I am the Lord, Thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me." I can't help but reflect on the chronology of the 1st Commandment. I think its order is more preference than consequence, in much the same way that our nation's founding fathers thought enough of free speech and yes, free religious expression, that they listed both priorities rightly in our Constitution's 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights. When Moses was gone for a while, the Israelites were all a flutter. Enter the golden calf. Christ is getting pushed out of His own birthday by His very own brothers and sisters whom he came, suffered, and died for to save. Enter materialistic obsession to try to satisfy eternally unquenchable narcissistic whims. 2,000 + years later, nothing has changed. People are still people. For the Israelites when Moses was gone, it was the golden calf, for us, as we push Christ farther from us, it's simply stuff. And yet, no one is ever satisfied. And Jdimytai Damour is still very much dead.
Materialism, in our secular trends, has bastardized Christmas. What was once vibrantly centered on charity, love, or maybe just making more of an effort to be a little nicer to each other, has waned in the shadow of what can now literally be called "Shop until you drop." Christmas for some people overcome by grief from passed love ones is tragically a sad affair. Yet for many others, it's a dismal time simply because of the stress created by the unspoken but enslaving societal obligations of shopping that we must do, and money that we really don't have but still must spend. It's all about even-Steven, I gave to you, now I want from you. What should be enhanced and joyous quality time with family and friends is more about emotional stress, increased and perhaps insurmountable debt, traffic jams, getting cut off, not finding a parking space, getting constantly bumped into and shoved around by crowds, long lines, bounced credit cards, and when you finally do make it out of the store (if you survive the stampede) you now feel sick from the cold you're getting from being run down and overexposed to other people's germs in close quarters too often, and now, last but not least, "Oh crap! It's snowing!" I wonder how many of these tediously bought and often even unwanted Christmas gifts could instead be more easily replaced with Christmas deeds of heartfelt kindness and even genuine need that would probably be cheaper for the giver and far more appreciated and remembered by the recipient. And in the end, both would inevitably benefit far more in their relationship from that exchange than the so-called traditional version involving inanimate things.
The birth of or Savior was the beginning of our salvation, but for some of us, it's still not enough. It bears repeating, we've lost our way. We've tossed out the beautiful Nativity passage from the Gospel of Luke and replaced it by another alluring retail flier. We glossed over the whole Salvation thing and instead myopically focused on the gold, frankincense and myrrh. (And by the way, what the heck is frankincense and myrrh, anyway? Does Walmart carry them?) And some still wonder why they are still searching for something better, and not surprisingly, to no avail. We are far too obsessed with the here and now, with instant gratification, material wealth, this fleeting world, and the greatest fallacy of all time, "He with the most toys wins!" Much like the aroused but distracted sea captains of Greek mythology who succumbed along with their crews by inadvertently but foolishly crashing their ships on the underlying rocky shoals to get to the alluring Sirens above them, if we allow ourselves to focus on the worthless trinkets of shiny materialism while missing the bigger and more important picture, we too, will steer ourselves into our own demise. Yet ironically and despite our own hedonism, we fail to see that we are better and more deserving than to suffer such gross and needless misfortune.
What we usually perceive as better usually isn't, be it whatever the whim du' jour, booze, drugs, gambling, sex, and yes, stuff. Way too many of you are "stuff-aholics." I'm not Jesus Christ. He is a far better man than me, and if for no other reason, because I know, that unlike me, He is not sitting up there on the throne to the right of our Father, chuckling to Himself, while shaking His head and disgust and looking down here at all us empty-souled fools and saying, "I told them so." That's another facet to mob mentality. After a while, nobody listens. They just follow and emulate, whether it's in a soccer riot, a retail store stampede, or a secular-progressive culture where those who either aggressively or passively perpetuate paganism do so by hatred, ignorance, apathy or abject cowardice to do otherwise. How many of you routinely go to the mall during any time of the year, not to buy a specific or needed item, but just as a source of recreation? And how many times to you go to the mall only for recreation and come back with a car trunk load full of stuff that you didn't need, want, or probably even think about until you saw it on the store shelf? Evil is like economics. It can be "micro" or "macro." Economists tell us that part of the world's current economic mess is not just about greed, corruption, and incompetence by corporations and governments, but by overspending on credit by far too many consumers. To paraphrase a famous "Doonesbury" cartoon caption, we have met the enemy, and it is us.
Sometimes there is little difference between kids and adults. As many parents know all too well, even a kid's favorite toy becomes a dusty relic in relatively short order. As adults in the ever-changing hi-tech electronic age, we're no different. We can't wait to have the latest gadget, but once we do, six months later we're back in a six-hour long line to replace the now old gadget with today's newest widget. Yes, this is what Jdimytai Damour died for, not for peace, equality, or justice. Not to rescue the oppressed, free the enslaved or to feed the hungry. He died because 2,000 raving lunatics wanted a widget, and they had to have it right now.
What good could those 2,000 raving lunatics, who perhaps an hour before were all normal and perhaps even fairly decent people, could have done had they not rushed a Walmart, but (at a preferably more civilized pace) instead filled a line of servers at a soup kitchen, or even simply filled the pews of a church? And for many of those who do fill the pews of a church, they won't be back again until Easter. After all, gotta keep up the pretense to make pious old Grandma happy, quiet, and not lecturing us on the holidays, right? One presumption is all but certain, if lines were longer in churches than in stores on this past Black Friday, Jdimytai Damour would probably still be alive today. Besides, if Black Friday is supposedly the beginning of the Christmas season, why not fill the churches instead of the stores? What part of the word "Christmas" do we fail to understand or accept, and why?
I bet I know what some of you might be thinking right about now: "OK, OK, OK, Jdimytai Damour, yeah, yeah, we get it already. So what? Nobody even heard of the guy. He was a nobody. He was some guy who worked in a Walmart somewhere, New York, I think. Why does Wrenn keep repeating the guy's name so many times?" That's just the point, and if you missed it, then you missed the entire point of this column, and if so, perhaps you are part of the very problem I have described. The true fact of the matter is that Jdimytai Damour is not only worthy of mentioning and repeating, but even essential to mention and frequently repeat, and precisely because he was a nobody that most people never heard of. In other words, he was like most of us, and he was one of us, no better, and no worse, a human being, with God-given dignity. And now we have lost our fellow nobody named Jdimytai Damour, and he was far too precious and far too important for us to lose.
Especially for "stuff."
Merry Christmas.
"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" (Mark: 8, 36.)
Doug Wrenn
