Day And Night -- A Thanksgiving Post

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  A completely American holiday!  An old friend of mine on Facebook recently described how this day should be considered the perfect holiday:  no annoying music, nobody getting drunk, no exclusion based on religion, and the option of watching three football games featuring some of the best teams in the NFL!

I've commented in the past how Thanksgiving appeared to be evolving into a two-day holiday, following the lead set by Jews in the western hemisphere, who celebrated several holidays that had originally been celebrated as one day, for two.  However, it appears that the retail industry has taken advantage of this trend, to the point of infringing on the holiday itself.  Accordingly, this expected two-day holiday is splitting into two completely separate halves, and they couldn't be more different than day and night.

"Black Friday" has become the unofficial first shopping day of the Christmas/Holiday season.  When this term because part of our culture, there was the understanding that this would be the opportunity for all the aggressive early-bird types to buy all the gifts they needed for Chanukah/Christmas/Kwanzaa as soon as Thanksgiving was over, to avoid the last-minute insanity of buying gifts on Christmas Eve itself (those who celebrate Chanukah, an 8-day holiday, could argue that the gifts could be given on the last night, and not the first night, but that only delays and extends the last-minute insanity).

Most retail outlets would acknowledge these early birds by opening their stores early.  Maybe at 7am, maybe at 6 am.  That is to say, at dawn, or maybe a few minutes beforehand, on the morning of the day AFTER Thanksgiving.

So what do we now have this year?  Stores opening at 3 a.m.  Not good enough?  2 a.m.  Still not content to camp outside in tents until then?  Midnight at Target (tar-ZHAY)!  But now, thanks to Walmart, Best Buy, and Geek Squad, we have the final insult -- 10 pm on Thanksgiving ITSELF!

Employees had to put the kabosh on their own Thanksgiving dinner, and all the happiness that goes with it, for the sake of material things!  Early-bird types were now prepping to go to retail malls and outlets late at night, or in the "wee small hours of the morning," to grab the best deals they could off the shelves, with the knowledge that if they were not fast enough, someone else could yank it away from them.

Excuse me . . . is this not the same insanity that the idea of Black Friday was intended to prevent?  Shopping for presents at insane hours??  Whatever happened to the image of being thankful for what we've already been given -- have we rejected that so quickly to grab and snatch what we don't already have???

Even if Thanksgiving one day becomes a two-day holiday, let's please make it two days of Thanksgiving, and NOT Black Thursday And Friday.  Yes, it certainly is a tradition to give gifts to loved ones during the December celebrations that follow Thanksgiving, but it's not a life-or-death obligation!  Gift-giving is meant to make the holidays happier and more enjoyable, and not to usurp, overtake, or obliterate the true meaning of the holiday!

So my recommendation is this:  The day after Thanksgiving, if you don't have to work, use it as you would any other vacation day.  Sleep late!  If you want to make sure you're not forgetting to buy gifts for the loved ones in your life, wait until the weekend AFTER Thanksgiving.  If you can't wait that long, do it the SUNDAY after Thanksgiving!  The recipients of your gifts will (hopefully) be a thousand times more concerned with the thought that went into your choice of gift than the manner in which it was obtained (or how much it cost you).

As I said above, the tradition of gift-giving at this time of the year is meant to make the holidays happier and more enjoyable.  What you choose to give is not a measure of who you are as a person, and neither is the price of the gift you purchased.  However, there are still those who think of gift-giving as a mandatory requirement and a dollar-for-dollar obligation, and continue to use it as an excuse for demeaning tit-for-tat attitudes towards others.  As a result, the joy of gift-giving is sometimes ruined because it becomes something that is motivated less by caring and happiness, and more by a desire to appease someone else.  All I'll say on that subject is that those of us who choose to express our friendship, affection, and love for others through gifts are welcome to do so because they choose to give that way, not because some unseen force tells us we MUST purchase it at 2am to get the best deal, not because "everyone's doing it,"  not to make ourselves look good, and not so we can demand something from the recipient later!  It's a gift, not an obligation -- that means that the recipient is not required to reciprocate anything.  If they choose to do so, that's great -- but it's their decision to do so, and not yours!

In conclusion, let's remember that the message of Thanksgiving should temper the gift-giving season with a little wisdom.  We cannot be defined by gifts.  Gifts are important, but the people in your life matter a thousand times more than gifts do.  The fact that we have these people in our lives, and that they hopefully love us as much as we love them, is the greatest gift that there is, and it cannot be priced or put on sale like material objects.  If you really wanted to rush out there and snag all the gifts you could, I'm glad I didn't stop you.  However, life would be a little more balanced if we rushed out to be kind and respectful to others just as quickly and just as intently as we did when a corporate giant told us to buy something when we should have been sleeping.

DISCLAIMER:  The above post was not meant to impede or decry our capitalist system, to state that gifts should never be purchased, or to imply that anyone who looks forward to receiving gifts in December is wrong.  Any misperception of insults or besmirchings is entirely the responsibility of the reader of this message, and the author bears no responsibility for same.

For those who read and like this blog, I am thankful for you.  Just as I am already thankful for my health, my earnings, my family, and my friends, I am thankful for you.  Please keep reading, and don't be afraid to comment!

9/11/11 Ten Years Later

Part of this is a reprint from New Day's post from last year, but it's also updated.

At the time, I was working in-house for a no-fault insurance carrier on Wall Street. I was scheduled to attend two arbitrations in Huntington, Long Island. Physically, I was far removed from what was about to happen, but I still felt the impact.

Driving to Huntington on the Northern State Parkway, I decided to put on Howard Stern. At the time, he was still on 92.3 K-Rock, and not Sirius or XM Radio. Hadn't listened to him in some time, so I wanted a chuckle.

Howard was not joking that morning. He did let through a few asides about how frustrated he was that Pamela Anderson wouldn't hook up with him, but that was NOT the point of that morning's broadcast. People were calling in telling him that two planes had hit the WTC Twin Towers! Some had seen those planes passing overhead, some had seen the actual impact. I didn't understand what this all meant -- hadn't it already been 8 years since something happened to the World Trade Center?

Notwithstanding Howard's stature, I switched to the other stations on the radio -- surely this was either a rebroadcast of the 1993 bombing, or something entirely different. All other radio stations were reporting the same thing -- the Towers were hit, people were jumping out the windows, Muslim extremists were responsible. How the hell was this happening?!?!?!?

I made it to the first arbitration. The arbitrator had the TV news on, showing both towers in flames, yet we proceeded. Headed to the next one, my adversary was there, but the arbitrator was not.

After 20 minutes, she arrived, after pulling her daughter out of school. She explained to us both that she would not be able to adequately decide the arbitration and continued the case, exhorting us both to "go home and be with your families."

Before leaving, we briefly discussed what had just happened. Although it may be the work of terrorist, she said, it might have been an American, like Timothy McVeigh, who was behind this. I disagreed -- one week beforehand, Israel had pulled out of the World Counsel on Racism, and the US had followed suit. I opined that this was most likely the work of some Palestinian extremists who thought they could punish the US for our "Zionist" leanings. I said, "This was an act of war, nothing else. The US simply has to respond to this, or the rest of the world will think we're weak."

I called my Mom and my girlfriend (at the time) to let them know I was OK. Tried calling the office, but the calls wouldn't go through. I couldn't tell if I had to go into the office, but it seemed that just going home would be the best choice under the circumstances.

The traffic was heavier than normal on the parkways that day -- the State Troopers were out in full force. As I proceeded home, the Towers fell. Without the benefit of TV or Internet access (there were no Blackberries back then), I imagined them both falling down to one side, not collapsing in a stack. I began to fear that all of Wall Street had just been taken out.

I also got angry. I began to mutter under my breath, "Who did this? Who the ---- thought they could do this in our country?!?!?! Find them, kill them all, and let G-D sort them out!"

At the time, I still lived with my parents in Baldwin. My mother's birthday was that day, so as planned, we all had Carvel ice cream cake with my aunt, uncle, & grandmother as we watched CNN. By that time, in the evening, they had removed footage that rumored to show people in the West Bank dancing and selling candy, reveling in this lethal blow rendered by their would-be heroes. Damn them.

For the next week, there was no work. Mayor Giuliani had sealed off everything south of 14th Street in Manhattan, and that included my office. I did not know if I still had a job, or if my co-workers were safe.

Later, we learned that the husband of my mother's friend had perished during the attack. He was on the 90th floor of Tower One -- exactly the point of impact where the plane hit. We decided amongst ourselves that he never knew it happened, and we found solace in that thought. A week later, a memorial service was held in his honor at our synagogue -- it was jam-packed to the rafters.
In the following months, nobody hated anyone else. Total strangers would talk to each other on the subway as if there were no boundaries. A respect for the sanctity of life began to permeate everyone's thoughts and actions. At the same time, an enemy named Osama bin Laden, who had already claimed responsibility for the 1998 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, and the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, appeared to have been the central figure responsible for the attack. he would follow this up with video and audio tapes decrying perceived injustices against the Muslim world, that somehow justified this mass murder. He was being protected by the Taliban, an extremist religious party that bullied Afghanistan into submission, and was a leader in a gang known as Al-Qaeda.
In a more shocking turn of events, after the U.S. began its eventual attack of retaliation against Afghanistan, it was learned that one member of the Taliban was an American citizen named John Walker Lindh. America screamed for his head as a traitor, but he was instead convicted of a lesser sentence.
Looking back, it seemed like a cross between Pearl Harbor and JFK's assassination. Like those both events, 9/11 brought our country together in a time of shared pain, outrage, and chaos. Like both events, our country emerged stronger than before. Admittedly, it did not lead to victory in a just war, and did not serve to lionize the leader of our nation at that time. But it did remind us, the hard way, that life is short and fragile. It awakened us to the reality that others in this world are so easily swayed by inflammatory rhetoric, that they de-value human life. It made us more patriotic, more G-D-fearing, and more wary of who in the world seeks us well or harm.

Today, since 9/11 happened to have been on a weekend, I had the opportunity to watch the memorial service in lower Manhattan on TV.  It's hard not to get choked up or burst into tears not watching it -- it is more depressing than a Holocaust documentary with the theme from "Platoon" as the soundtrack.  The reaction I felt today was, "How MANY people died that day?  How MANY families were hurt by these terrorists?  How CAN they all heal, even ten years after?"

Unless we individually lost someone that day, we can't know.  We can only admire their resolve, including the numerous children who read the names of parents they'd lost, some of whom were only in infancy at the time. 

Since that time, there has been a small amount of closure with the death of Osama Bin Laden on May 1, 2011.  However, this only led to mass hysteria and continued conspiracy theories.  All day long we've been waiting with baited breath over a terrorist attack that (as I predicted) never materialized.  Apparently, we forgot the healing words of our leaders in the months following September 11, 2001 -- STOP BEING AFRAID.  Go out and live as you normally would.  To do otherwise is what these gangstas WANT us to do!

The Four Pillars would not normally be needed for the last remaining superpower on the planet, but some segments of the population need it, so here goes:

THE UNITED STATES EXISTS.  We revolted against Britain to seek independence and freedom.  We grew from a weak confederation of loosely united colonies to be the strong UNITED country that we are.

THE UNITED STATES MATTERS.  No matter how much hate is hurled at us by other nations and cultures, we remain relevant in this world, no matter what they try to do to us.

THE UNITED STATES BELONGS.  The rest of this world must admit, no matter how begrudgingly, that we are needed.  To promote freedom and democracy, and to develop lacking nations into respectable countries -- if they don't want that help, it's their fault, and not ours. 

THE UNITED STATES DESERVES.  Other nations owe us respect, even if they wish they didn't.  Without the United States, the rest of the world would fall into the two extremes of dictatorship and anarchy, and democracy would become extinct.

We are the wealthiest country, we have the strongest army, and we have the fairest and justest government in the world.  Who are we to become self-hating, weak-willed people pleasers?  Because a bunch of gangstas hate us?!?!?!  LET them hate us.  LET them talk their pseudo religious trash.  LET them demonize us in their cheaply-made, amateurish videos.  Who the heck are they?

They're NOTHING.  Why give them power they don't deserve by being afraid?

And once again, my best wishes to the families of those who lost loved ones on that day, and of those first responders who met their deaths later from Ground Zero-related illnesses.  G-D bless the NYPD, the FDNY, and the PAPD.  G-D bless the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.  G-D bless New York and New Jersey, and the United States of America.