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MOM’S WORLD
Finding Meaning Beyond Black Friday Driving on the road by my house, I can still see pumpkins on the pillars by my neighbor’s driveway just a short distance from a Christmas store that has already put up all of their Christmas lights in the very first week of November. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Christmas. I like seeing decorations. I like the Christmas cookies, family getting together and a nice snow-covered landscape. But when I walk into Dollar General and 10 | November-December 2021
see the shelves cleared of Halloween candy and candy canes already up, I feel sick. The blatant consumerism that plagues our society is disturbing to me. Buy. Buy. Buy. If you want your kids to be happy: buy. If you want to show that you love someone: buy. If you want to exude Christmas spirit: buy. So how do we find meaning beyond Black Friday while being bombarded with sales that are too good to pass up (in theory) and constant reminders of what
is valued in our culture. Who doesn’t love to see the sparkle in their kids’ eyes when they open something unexpected from us or from Santa? When do we start to value time more than money, experience more than materialism and love more than greed? Maybe by taking stock of what we have and replacing consumerism with gratitude and simplicity. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about things I want to do. One of my favorite things to do right now is to catch aawmag.com
