Stay Home, America
A day of thanks shouldn't be a day of
nonessential commerce.
By Peggy Noonan in the
Wall Street Journal
I had a lot of jobs in
a somewhat knockabout youth—waitress, clerk, temporary secretary, counter girl
in a bakery (nice—no one's ever sad in a bakery) and in a flower shop (hard—for
hours I removed the thorns from the tough, gnarly roses we sold, which left my
hands nicked and bloodied). All the jobs of my teens and early 20s were
wonderful in the sense that I was lucky to have a job. Unskilled baby
boomers were crowding into an ailing economy; they took what they could and did
their best from there. I could earn a salary to buy what I needed—clothes,
food, money to go to college at night, then during the day. But the jobs were
most wonderful in that they contributed to the experience hoard we all keep in
our heads.
The best was
waitressing. That's hard work too, eight or 10 hours on your feet, but you get
to know the customers. People will tell you their life stories over coffee.
There's something personal, even intimate in serving people food, and regulars
would come in at 6 or 7 a.m. and in time you'd find you were appointments in
each other's lives. At the Holiday Inn on Route 3 in New Jersey, long-haul
truckers on their way to New York would stop for breakfast. They hadn't talked
to anyone in hours. I'd pour coffee and they would start to talk about
anything—the boss, the family, politics.
I learned from them
what a TSA agent told me many years later: "Everyone's carrying the same
things." I had asked the agent what she'd learned about people from years
of opening people's bags and seeing what was inside. She meant her answer
literally: Everybody's carrying the same change of clothes, the same toiletries.
But at the moment she said it we both understood that she was speaking
metaphorically too: Everyone's carrying the same burdens, the same woes one way
or another. We have more in common than we know.
Once when I was 18 my
friends and I ran away. We pooled our cash, bought a broken-down car for $200
and aimlessly drove south. We wound up in Miami Beach, in what was then a
fallen-down, beat-up area and is now probably a millionaire's row. I worked at
a restaurant whose name I remember as the Lincoln Lanes. Jackie Gleason did his
TV show nearby, and the June Taylor dancers used to come in for lunch. They
were so great—young and beautiful and full of tales about the show and about
Jackie, who once drove by in his car. I thought of him when I first saw Chris Christie,
years later. Mr. Christie on YouTube confronting an aggrieved constituent was
sheer Gleason: "To the moon, Alice!"
The hardest job I had
was working the floor at a women's clothing store on Park Avenue in Rutherford,
N.J. It was part of a chain. It was boring when traffic was light—clocks go
slow in retail when no one's there. There's no stool to sit on during your shift:
You're working the floor so that's where they want you, walking around, folding
sweaters, rearranging hangers. You don't have the same conversations with a
harried woman trying on a skirt that you do with a tired trucker on his way to
the city who decides to give you his philosophy of life.
One thing all these
jobs had in common was something so common, so expected, that it was unremarked
upon. You got holidays off. You were nonessential personnel. You worked at a
place that didn't have to be open, so it wasn't. You got this gift, a day off,
sometimes paid and sometimes not, but a break, an easement of responsibility.
I suppose the shops I
worked at were unthinkingly following tradition. Thanksgiving, Christmas—these
are days to be with friends and family and have a feast. Maybe if you pressed
them they'd say something like: "This is what we do. We're Americans.
Thanksgiving is a holiday. We're supposed to give thanks, together."
They'd never trespass on a national day of commonality, solidarity and respect.
You know where we're
going, because you've seen the news stories about the big retailers that have
decided to open on Thanksgiving evening, to cram a few extra hours in before
the so-called Black Friday sales. About a million Wal-Mart workers will have to
be in by 5 p.m. for a 6 p.m. opening, so I guess they'll have to eat quickly
with family, then bolt. Kmart will open on Thanksgiving too, along with Target,
Sears, Best Buy and Macy's, among others.
The conversation has
tended to revolve around the question of whether it's good for Americans to
leave their gatherings to go buy things on Thanksgiving. In a societal sense,
no—honor the day best you can and shop tomorrow. But that's not even the
question. At least shoppers have a choice. They can decide whether or not they
want to leave and go somewhere else. But the workers who are going to have to
haul in to work the floor don't have a choice. They've been scheduled. They've
got jobs they want to keep.
It's not right. The
idea that Thanksgiving doesn't demand special honor marks another erosion of
tradition, of ceremony, of a national sense. And this country doesn't really
need more erosion in those areas, does it?
The rationale for the
opening is that this year there are fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving
and Christmas, and since big retailers make a lot of their profits during that
time something must be done. I suppose something should. But blowing up
Thanksgiving isn't it.
There has been a nice
backlash on the Internet, with petitions and Facebook posts. Some great
retailers have refused to be part of what this newspaper called Thanksgiving
Madness. Nordstrom won't open on Thanksgiving, nor will T.J. Maxx, Costco or
Dillard's. P.C. Richard & Son took out full-page ads protesting. The CEO
was quoted last week saying Thanksgiving is "a truly American
holiday" and "asking people to be running out to shop, we feel is
disrespectful." Ace Hardware said, simply: "Some things are more
important than money."
That is the sound of
excellent Americans.
People deserve a day
off if what they do is nonessential. Selling a toy, a jacket, even a rose is
nonessential.
Black Friday—that
creepy sales bacchanal in which the lost, the lonely, the stupid and the
compulsive line up before midnight Friday to crash through the doors, trampling
children and frightening clerks along the way—is bad enough, enough of a blight
on the holiday.
But Thanksgiving
itself? It is the day the Pilgrims invented to thank God to live in such a
place as this, the day Abe Lincoln formally put aside as a national time of
gratitude for the sheer fact of our continuance. It's more important than
anyone's bottom line. That's a hopelessly corny thing to say, isn't it? Too
bad. It's true.
Oh, I hope people
don't go. I hope it's a big flop.
Stay home, America.
And happy Thanksgiving
to our beloved country, the great and fabled nation that is still, this day,
the hope of the world.
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