It’s black Friday and my house is overwhelmed with newspaper ads and catalogs. Everywhere I turn, someone is begging me to buy a gift from them. I went shopping on black Friday once and I doubt I will go again. I went with good intentions (to find everything on my Christmas list before my wife even woke up), but I left frustrated by my own impulses to buy things that I didn’t need and the flat-out carnality and greed of the shoppers around me. I’ve seen stampedes like this before, but always on TV. The one that comes to mind was a group of starving people in Somalia who stampeded for food that been dropped in as famine relief. That kind of desperation is understandable. But desperation to find the “perfect” gift at the “perfect” price, that’s nothing to be desperate for. In fact, what I saw on my black Friday adventure was a lot of gifts like DVDs and ties that really aren’t all that perfect to begin with. It seemed like a lot of people were just ferociously grabbing sale items they could give their loved ones that would suffice as gifts. “When I saw that DVD, I just knew I had to give it to you!” (Never mind there were only 6 to choose from on the $5 rack.)
I have some thoughts about gifts I’m going to blog over the next few weeks. These are things I’ve been thinking about over the last few years. (especially because I have a new family and we are starting our own traditions and deciding how we will spend our Christmases). I guess this week I will just leave you with asking, “is this really a gift that expresses my love for that person, or am I just buying it because it was a good deal?”
More thoughts to come later … peace! – Russ
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