Bob Burkett, Editor-in-Chief

Thanksgiving is a perfect time to acknowledge all of the blessings we at Our Lady’s University have been given. The Golden Dome. Touchdown Jesus. The Basilica. The ability to meet and interact with some of the most intelligent and well-rounded people we will ever have the pleasure of meeting. An undefeated 12-0 football season, number one overall ranking, and a trip to the National Championship in Miami. In short, we are all thankful to be part of the Notre Dame family.

Our own personal families are also an important part of Thanksgiving. Even the most perfect feast of thick slices of turkey, heaps of mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing and pecan pie for dessert would fall short of expectations without the most important ingredient: family. It is a common tradition for my family to travel to Columbia, Missouri, to meet with the rest of our extended family and share this feast. Generally we only get to see most of these family members once a year, so there is a lot of quality conversation and renewing of relationships occurring as we sit around the dinner table. This bringing of family together and sharing of a family meal on a large scale makes Thanksgiving one of my favorite holidays. Faith, family and food – three essentials to any great holiday.

Yet holidays like Thanksgiving are gradually being consumed by consumerism. It is no secret that the biggest shopping holiday of the year – Black Friday – occurs the day after Thanksgiving. My cousins and I woke up to watch the madness occur early Friday morning. People would rush into the store in a panic, seeking the best deals on electronics, furniture and clothing. It was amusing to watch initially, but the more I take a step back, the more I realize how sad it really is. This year I watched as a woman dove headlong into a pile of towels (on sale at $1.50 apiece) and frantically filled her shopping cart with them. The people rushing the towels seemed more like animals than humans – they were doing anything they could to get a towel for themselves, pushing and shoving other people out of the way and even playing tug-of-war with towels. Sure, it was a good deal. But it was only a towel.

Even more upsetting are those places that have moved their Black Friday deals to Thanksgiving. Certain stores moved their deals to the night before Black Friday – Thanksgiving, which I guess is an unofficial Black Thursday now. Stores began offering their deals as early as 8 pm on Thanksgiving to lure in the Black Friday crowd. For my family 8 PM is the perfect time for post-meal bonding and social interaction. The enticement of bargains led my aunt and uncle to head to Best Buy to get a new television – an aunt and uncle I had not seen all year. People are so busy in this day and age that it is difficult for them to get together amongst all of the various commitments they have – work, school, sports – and to undermine the holidays designated for family time by offering incentives to sacrifice more time with family seems like a cheap trick. It is already difficult to get enough face-to-face interaction with family and friends by only seeing them once a year – now that the holidays are being infringed upon by opportunistic businesses it is all the more difficult.

The irony of all of the Black Friday hubbub is that these gifts are generally bought early for Christmas presents for other people. Why are presents given? Because they facilitate relationships based on mutual exchanges with one another. The gifts are given for the same purpose as any run-of-the-mill conversation or communal meal. Seldom will you see someone receive a gift who appreciates the gift itself more than the thought behind the giving or the person who gave it to them. The spirit of Thanksgiving is this: to learn to be thankful for the people around us and the things we have been given. We can show appreciation for others by giving them gifts, but the best way to show appreciation for others is by spending time with them, directing our personal focus and effort to them. Consumerism detracts from the intentions behind the season, focusing instead on the proximate, material means of this life rather than the final end in the next life.

To a certain extent the mass media is at fault. Commercials on television target children from early ages and give them the false impression that material goods provide happiness. The American Dream is all about how people in poverty use hard work to achieve material success, which is equated with happiness. The most popular music of today, hip hop, emphasizes the materialistic necessities of money, cars and displays of wealth as necessities for happiness. Society tells us that the meaning of life – and the best way to live it – is to spend time with those tangible things that we can see, feel, hear and touch.

The conflation of materialism and happiness is incredibly prevalent in modern society. When was the last time I could spill out my heart and soul to a computer or television and have it comfort me? The material goods cannot take the place of what is actually supposed to make us happy in life: our relationships with others and God. These personal relationships transcend material realities and are rooted in something deeper. When someone dies, one’s relationship with that person does not simply end – attachment to the person persists even after they physically die. Material objects, on the other hand, exist right now and are gone forever after our death. While material objects can facilitate immaterial relationships, materialism detracts from the true and inevitable focus of these holidays and, indeed, of human happiness.

Unfortunately, the materialism that begins on Black Friday is carried on throughout the Christmas season, and it is important to realize this. So when decorating the tree with the family, making gingerbread cookies or even unwrapping presents on Christmas day, remember the true purpose of all of these festivities: to bring family and friends together and celebrate Jesus’ birth. Enjoy each of these activities, but make sure that they are being used appropriately and not reducing the ultimate meaning of Christmas to a matter of receiving or giving the best presents. Thanksgiving and Christmastime are two of my favorite holidays of the year, and it is disturbing to see the consumerist trend of buying gifts dominating the media and eclipsing the purposes and meanings of these holidays.

Bob Burkett is a senior anthropology and political science major who resides in Dillon Hall. He suggests that The Grinch (the cartoon version) and A Christmas Story be added to your holiday movie watch list. For other great holiday movie suggestions, he can be contacted at rburkett@nd.edu.