Occam's Razor

I don’t know if you have noticed, but real holidays have been slowly disappearing. It’s getting almost impossible to find a holiday that is, well, a holiday. If you are thinking that a holiday is the same thing as having a paid day off during the week to shop, Madison Avenue blesses you. If you are thinking a holiday is a day where you stay home and your employer pays for it, and everything that represents the hassle of normal life pretty much shuts down then, like the Grinch, you have some idea of the true meaning of a holiday. A holiday is a day when life generally stops. It’s like being retired for a day. It’s a mental health day.

It’s hard to believe but this is the way it used to be. On Memorial Day during the decades following the Civil War, when it was better known as Decoration Day, the only work-like activity was decorating the graves of civil war soldiers and with about 700,000 of them there were plenty to decorate. The big event of the day was watching the parade down Main Street, but that was about it. If you felt ambitious, maybe you went back home and roasted some ears of corn or hamburger steaks on a grill in the backyard. Our Civil War seems almost trivial compared to the twenty million or so who died in the First World War. No surprise then that Veterans Day (when it was better known as Armistice Day) was also often a day for quiet contemplation and for expressing genuine gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy due to our veterans. Veterans Day might have also been focused around a parade down Main Street, where the populace would applaud or take off their hats as proud veterans marched past.

Today, most employers do not even give the day as a holiday. World War I is so 1919. The last American soldier that served in the Great War died a few years back. Instead, pretty much all our holidays have been co-opted to honor our real national religion: capitalism. Even Martin Luther King has been used by Madison Avenue as an excuse to sell stuff in what is otherwise a dead retail month. King did move mountains, but his legacy now is principally about moving mountains of mattresses, sheets, pillowcases and appliances.

Supporting this seemingly insatiable need to shop are millions of retail workers, who are virtually the worst paid people in the country. (Migrant workers may be worse off.) With a few exceptions, if you work retail not only are you working inconvenient hours, you are likely not even making close to a living wage. In fact, you are likely a part timer because few retail stores want to hire you full time. Then they might have to pay you benefits or overtime, which are expensive. If you haven’t compared the cost of living with retail workers’ income, you can trust me on this: you cannot earn even poverty line wages working retail. If you support yourself working retail, even with two or more jobs you are probably eligible for food stamps.

If all this were not enough for retail workers, then there are your hours, which are likely to be constantly shifting. If you work part time for our largest retail employer (Wal-Mart) expect to be batted around like a ping pong ball. You may work forty hours one week and four hours the next. Expect to be straightening store shelves at 2 a.m. and maybe back for more at 6 a.m. You may even be locked in the store overnight.

You sure would appreciate a real holiday where for just a couple of days a year you can just zone out while someone else helps pay your bills. But apparently even a couple of holidays a year are a couple too many for retail workers. Thanksgiving is no longer sacrosanct. That’s right, retail worker. No turkey with stuffing for you, not that you could afford turkey anyhow with organic turkeys going at $4.09 a pound this year. Better to keep your Thanksgiving meal modest: maybe a dozen Krispy Kremes for dinner instead. You will need all that sugar because increasingly Thanksgiving has become just another shopping day, which means retail worker drones like you will be hustling in the aisles and at the registers. Black Friday is giving way to Black Thursday.

With so many scuzzy retail chains out there, it is hard to pick from the worst of the worst, but any retail chain that is open on Thanksgiving is, by definition, among the worst of the worst. These include Wal-Mart (opening at 9 PM), KMart (open Thanksgiving for the last ten years straight), Old Navy and BooksaMillion. I know about BooksaMillion personally because my daughter had the misfortune to work there for a year. There they were on Thanksgiving at 9 AM as usual, fluorescent lights all ablaze and the parking lot virtually empty. This was of course some years ago. Today, increasingly you are thinking that even on Thanksgiving there will be some stores open at the local shopping center. If it’s BooksAMillion, you can practically count on it. And if you are an employee working on Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner means bringing some substandard turkey loaf to heat up in the microwave in the break room during your doubtless too short break.

Here is what should be open on Thanksgiving: gas stations, hospitals, hotels, homeless shelters, police and fire stations and that’s about it. You say you need to run down to the local Food Lion on turkey day because you need an extra jar of turkey gravy? Too bad for you. You should have thought about that by Wednesday night. It’s a holiday, stupid! It’s a day to spend with people who are important to you or, if you prefer, a day to vegetate at home with a bad turkey loaf roasted in your oven in an aluminum container, instant potatoes from a box and some gravy from a package. If you can muster any such feelings because if you work retail, it’s a day to be thankful. Instead you may be at some register somewhere or prepping the store for opening at midnight on Black Friday. See, only privileged people with money to buy stuff get to have holidays. For retail workers, be glad to have a crappy job. At least you have flexible hours, if flexible means hours at the convenience of your employer.

Perhaps as part of any reforms coming out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, one of them will be laws to redefine holidays so they resemble, well, holidays. Imagine how much more blissful we could be if we all knew that on a holiday we would get the day off (or at least be compensated extra for it if we could not). Imagine if most holidays were like Christmas (which is doubtless itself under retail attack) and life just sort of stopped. Who could not use more mental health days? I know I could, but from my retail days I know who could use them even more: the millions of suffering, hassled, stressed and underpaid retail workers of our country. I say we need a law to shut down all retail stores on Thanksgiving by law. Give everyone including our retail workers a real holiday with pay on Thanksgiving.