gBlog - How we see it …

A lot of cities are famous for their holiday displays. Look at Chicago and their shockingly famous Marshall Field’s Christmas store window displays- they’re amazing, and they’ve been a tradition for Chicagoans for 150 years now. Unfortunately, this year is the last year flocks can gather around the thirteen window displays of Marshall Field’s, because of a recent acquistion by Federated Department Stores, Inc. The store will be re-christened Macy’s, instead of keeping its’ original name.

Marshall Field’s, on Chicago’s State Street

Hats off to this massive Chicago institution- just who can beat Marshall Field’s in holiday spectacular? Ok, well, maybe Macy’s. I guess it’s good that someone who knows how to get into the spirit of the holidays is taking over the Chicago institution, instead of some flimsy excuse for showmanship. The grand-daddy of all showmen, Rowland H. Macy, opened R.H. Macy & Co. as a dry goods store in 1858 New York City. The first-day sales totaled $11.06, but in 1902 the cash cow that is Macy’s moved to its’ present location in Herald Square with a much larger profit margin. In 1924, Macy’s Herald Square location became the largest store in the world, an achievement that is still unmatched today, because of its’ 7th Avenue addition. The same year, ten thousand people watched Macy’s first Thanksgiving Day parade.

Kathy Jakobsen. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1988. Oil and canvas.

Patrick Murphy, Garfield peeking around a building, 2004.

In 1935, another department store giant Fred Lazarus, Jr., effortlessly wheedled then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt into changing the Thanksgiving holiday from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday because it would extend the Christmas shopping season, and therefore translate into more money for the nation’s business. In 1941, an Act of Congress supported the arrangement.

So, when you think you’re sitting down on that fourth Thursday of November to thank Indians and Pilgrims for sharing the land of plenty, you’re not really sitting down on the actual day that occured.

Your typical Thanksgiving get-together

You’re just sitting down on that day because American conglomerate corporations just want to milk you dry until you bleed red, and they become black.

Holiday shopping, originally envisioned as a series of outings to select and purchase gifts for friends, family members, co-workers, and professors (for those of you who really need that A), has now become a commercialized rite of passage for many. Traditionally, accountants recorded losses in red ink, and gains in black. The day after Thanksgiving, the beginning of the holiday shopping season, has been dubbed “Black Friday”, with tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. The earliest citation of Black Friday as a term was in 1986, but the day has been in existence since Lazarus and FDR, in 1935.

Commercialism, McDonaldization and materialism combine to become a single united force, and shoppers are somehow convinced to run and join the teeming lines outside of big-box retailers who promote specials and sales on this day.

Black Friday shopping lines

Thankfully, there is a backlash to holiday shopping- Adbusters, a prominent anti-consumerist magazine, dubbed Black Friday “Buy Nothing Day”. This “Buy Nothing Day” is a day filled with protest against the blind consumerism of holiday shoppers, observed by social activists and freethinkers. This concentrated exhibit of consumer power- participants refuse to purchase anything for 24 hours- raises awareness of what many social activists see as the abysmal consumption habits of capitalist pig societies like ours.

Americans claim to value individualism, so activities like the Whirl-Mart, where participants directly challenge the hegemony of popular culture, exist. This “art and action” approach consists of a motley crew of ‘supposed’ consumers who meet at a big-box superstore, usually a Wal-Mart or Toys “R” Us, and with slow meticulous movements, move empty shopping carts silently through store aisles. Participants “will not purchase anything and seek to form a lengthy chain of non-shoppers, continually weaving and ‘whirling’ through a maze of store aisles for up to an hour at a time”, says our beloved online encylopedia, Wikipedia… and these ‘supposed shoppers’ seek to mock and insult materialism, dubbing a Whirl-Mart “a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling”.

Whirl-Mart participants in Newcastle, PA

When security vultures set down to feast on Whirl-Marters, they scream “Hey, I’m still shopping! I haven’t found anything yet! You’ve no right to kick me out of here!” *rollicking laughter* Right, and security’d actually be breaking the law if they threw those consumers out, since “the customer is always right”- insert sly grin here. Ok, so these anti-consumer displays really do break the rules, and teach us that there is something we can do if we are in the faction of people who abhor consolidated, conglomerated society.

But let’s not take it too far- even Adfreak admitted,

“Now that we’ve finally attended our first ever Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (see photographic evidence…), we thought we’d finally be able to knowledgeably answer the question of whether the parade is an endearing holiday tradition or the ghastly opening salvo to another hugely commercial Christmas season.

But our feelings were decidedly mixed. On the one hand, it’s always unnerving to find that your offspring have an encyclopedic knowledge of characters from cartoons you never even knew they watched, but on the other hand the balloons, many of which are heavily bandaged after years of running into skyscrapers, bitter Thanksgiving winds and New York City lampposts, have this surprisingly homemade quality, like someone’s wacky uncle dreamt them up in his garage. They’re supersized and yet surprisingly fragile, which takes away some of their overtly commercial sting. Even the almighty Ronald McDonald looked just a little tentative about his buoyancy. Amazingly enough, there seemed to be little in terms of memorabilia for sale—at least at the corner of 43rd and Broadway. The only thing the kids Adfreak went with really wanted was one of those massive New York street pretzels, brand name unknown.”

So, how’s that for homemade semi-commercialism? Or is that just the American spirit of Christmas?