Giving Thanks

DUKES FANS: "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." John F. Kennedy Happy Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year, and I wish you all a week of good thoughts and living more in gratitude. I noticed that many places this year seemed to skip Thanksgiving and move right from Halloween to Christmas displays and consumption, even before Halloween. So I am repeating a slightly edited version of a piece I sent last year about giving thanks and consumption: FROM BLACK FRIDAY TO GIVING TUESDAY: THANKSGIVING, AND COMMERCE There have always been links between seasonal changes and commerce. Early human groups traveled across different places at different times in the year and found different things available for both consuming and trading. In the ancient world, spring meant hunting and trading for more plants and seeds, and going to where the herds of animals and schools of fish were plentiful in order to get more. Autumn meant increased hunting, trading, gathering and traveling to harvest plants and to get supplies and shelter for winter. Most hunting-gathering people already saw religious and mythological links between changes in seasons and their lives, so the special importance of different products at different times became natural. The original autumnal “thanksgivings” were literally the “giving of “Thanks” to the gods for a good harvest and/or hunt, and also a hope for surviving the winter. As cities and the lifestyle known as civilization developed, more extensive trading and conquering happened, and many more things became available. New products came from different parts of the world, and the having of lots of products became associated with everything from class level to social wealth to religious worth to personal worth, to political power and more. Civilizations keep producing and developing more products at an ever-increasing rate. And when civilizations developed into empires, the importance of having, trading, giving, and owning products exploded exponentially. Commerce became more and more of a driving force in cultures. Over time we have developed systems for coming up with new products to keep the commerce flowing: Research and Development, planned obsolescence, and upgrades. We have come up with more ways of putting products in front of people-signs, advertising campaigns, product placement, pop-up ads embedded in websites, celebrity endorsements, and more. The bazaars and marketplaces of the old days have been replaced by shopping malls, warehouse outlets and now online giants such as Amazon are replacing many brick and mortar stores. And there is no end in sight to this growth and expansion. After the 1924 debut of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, this post-Thanksgiving weekend quickly became the start of our “winter shopping season.” The gift-giving associated with the Christmas story became more and more the focus of Christmas, and the Friday after Thanksgiving was the time to get it started. Stores and shops ran special sales and campaigns to get people into the stores and opening up the wallets and pocketbooks. And this year it even started before Halloween. The term for that time is, of course, “Black Friday”, and the origin of that term has a dark side to it. In the 1950s, police in Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving. Hordes of shoppers and tourists flooded into the city to take advantage of the sales and in advance of the big Army-Navy football game that used to be held here every year on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Suburbs were relatively new and expanding, and the new highways and freeways made it easier for suburbanites to get into the city to shop as well as go to sporting events. Philly cops had to work extra-long shifts dealing with the increasing mess of huge crowds and miles of traffic problems. Shoplifters also took advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, and pickpockets endlessly worked the crowds. To police, then, the Friday after Thanksgiving was not joyous at all. Instead, it was “black.” By 1961, “Black Friday” had become the local term for that day in Philadelphia. Retailers tried unsuccessfully to change it to “Big Friday” in order to remove the negative connotations of the term, but that term didn’t take off. “Black Friday” was what it was called, and Black Friday it remained. So retailers did the next best thing: they changed the meaning and explanation for the term. They turned it into a story about businesses on that day suddenly making a profit-going into the black. This new story of what Black Friday meant caught on, and the term’s true origin was forgotten. Not only did the phrase catch on across the nation. And what was originally a one-day event slowly morphed into a four-day event that spawned other “retail holidays” such as Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday” came into being in 2005 as an idea to encourage people to shop online and build this new thing known as online businesses. With the amount of online shopping increasing over time and really jumping due to COVID, it is estimated that Cyber Monday this year will bring in some 20 billion dollars. Clearly this seasonal urge to spend is quite powerful in our culture. It even applies to charities and non-profits. A 2023 survey found the some 50% of charities and non-profits reported that most of their individual contributions came in between October and December. The ideas of holiday gifting, seasonal calls for thinking of others, and tax deductions combined to drive more charitable fundraising these last three months of the year. And this has resulted in the development of “Giving Tuesday.” Giving Tuesday is a day for making donations to fund good causes following Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The founders wanted people to focus on giving after their weekend shopping spree, and to see a seamless link between spending for family and self and giving to help others. The idea quickly took off, and it is now an international movement. It even has its own website- https://www.givingtuesday.org/about which serves as a conduit connecting groups, causes, organizations and individuals. The website has history, tools to get organized, and connections to local movements from around the world. Given the widespread challenges presented by the effects of the COVID pandemic, increased natural disasters and increases in worldwide poverty rates, support for charitable institutions is even more critical. Giving Tuesday is one way of making that support possible. So the “Black Friday” phenomenon can, and in many ways, has definitely overwhelmed the intended sense of the original autumnal thanksgivings. It often seems to be about things and about consumption above all else. But with a true focus on gratitude, it can be about the simple joys of family and friends get-togethers. And it can also lead to a “Giving Tuesday” if we allow ourselves to get beyond consumption and the products and onto to something more meaningful. We can find another way to extend the notion of gratitude by giving back and giving to. I hope more of us can move to that this year. If you are so moved, please go to: https://www.givingtuesday.org/about For some interesting statistics on US charitable giving: https://www.definefinancial.com/blog/charitable-giving-statistics/ D