Now that Black Friday has come and gone, big business is pushing a spending frenzy for end-of-year profits. With fewer than 26 days ’til Xmas, the race is on to swindle consumers out of precious dollars.
The big push is coming via ads everywhere you can see or hear them, whether traditional media, billboards, social and new media or direct marketing via mail and email.
All of this comes at great financial and other costs. Consumers are again feeling stressed, still paying off holiday spending bills from last year and expecting to go into holiday debt this year.
According to one estimate, between Black Friday and Cyber Monday people were expected to spend $75 billion.
Consumers are not the only ones feeling the pain: retail and associated workers are underpaid, overburdened and expecting threats and abuses during the season to be jolly.
Amazon workers and their supporters went on a Black Friday to Cyber Monday strike over six continents to “Make Amazon Pay.” UNI Global Union and Progressive International said the worker resistance aims to “hold Amazon accountable for labor abuses, environmental degradation and threats to democracy.” Amazon is the world’s biggest online company for retail shopping.
The protests will mark the fifth year of worker resistance with walk outs in the U.S., India, Germany, France, Spain, the UK and Italy, Bangladesh and other nations.
“Recent events have brought Amazon’s influence on our democracies into sharp focus. Reports reveal Amazon has underreported its lobbying expenditures across Europe by millions, and its refusal to participate in public hearings led the European Parliament to banning the company’s lobbyists.
In the U.S., Amazon’s legal actions challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) threaten to weaken protections for all American workers,” said protest organizers, which include over 80 unions, non-profits, environmental groups and tax watchdogs.
Besides that, shopping can literally kill you.
According to BlackFridayDeathCount.com, between 2006 and 2021 there have been 17 deaths and 125 injuries related to shopping. That doesn’t include holiday season fatalities caused by accidents, shootings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings and suicide. These deaths occurred during shopping.
A report came out of Little Rock, Ark., saying two people were shot during a Black Friday incident at a mall. ABC News reported the violence. “Two individuals today jeopardized the lives and safety of residents and visitors,” said Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. in a Nov. 29 statement.
So much for peace on earth and goodwill toward men? And in a society where the U.S. Surgeon General has declared loneliness to be at epidemic levels, consumption, or over-consumption, won’t forge meaningful connections or ease the pain of millions of Americans.
According to the American Psychiatric Association’s “Healthy Minds Monthly Poll,” conducted in early 2024, “30 percent of adults say they have experienced feelings of loneliness at least once a week over the past year, while 10 percent say they are lonely every day.
Younger people were more likely to experience these feelings, with 30 percent of Americans aged 18-34 saying they were lonely every day or several times a week, and single adults are nearly twice as likely as married adults to say they have been lonely on a weekly basis over the past year (39 percent vs. 22 percent.)”
Feelings of loneliness, depression and isolation only rise this time of year along with crime and suicide.
While business earnings rise, the total cost of following a cycle of corporate-induced buying weighs heavily on American society. Once again, instead of embracing spiritual values, family and community, the drive is on to spend more, owe more and suffer more.
Behind all of this is the false narrative that Jesus was born on Dec. 25 as scholars have admitted that was not the season of his birth.
Jesus in the Bible, along with his teachings, principles and lessons, is pushed out of the way for Santa. Talk of love, goodness, mercy and charity ring false in a society fueled by envy, avarice, self-conceit and arrogance.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has taught of and called for an understanding and embrace of spiritual values and teachings across religious lines as America has grown more and more devoid of those values.
He has called for strengthening the bonds of human connection through reviving our communities, our friendships and our families. He has said the best gift we can give one another is the beauty of our love and unity.
Jesus in the Bible exhorted us to love one another even as he loved us. Shouldn’t we return to honoring Jesus as a divine servant of his Father and perfect example for us today?
He taught caring for the poor, the orphans and those rejected by society. Unfortunately, the United States has rejected these lessons and teachings while paying lip service to these spiritual and healing values.
“It’s the greed for short-term profit that has generated an entire society devoid of values and that alienates the poor and the few non-greedy. Most of the incentives and many of the laws in the society are corrupt,” warned the Minister in his illuminating book, “a Torchlight for America,” published in 1993. He was speaking of the danger of a “Society of Perverse Incentives.”
“Legislative policy and tax law is perverted to work for the rich. The political action committees (PACs), the lobbyists, the special-interest groups, all work for the rich. The rich get a capital gains tax break. The corporations get to write off special deductions and interest on loans. The poor get nothing but the burden and the blame,” he noted.
“Pride and arrogance are part of the leaders’ mentality. This spiritual disease is what blinds them to the true formula for success, because they’re trying to keep up a posture in the world that is out of step with the will of God and the demands of the time. They want to maintain themselves as the great imperialist power, the overlord, the slavemaster, the god beside God.”
“The corporations, the high-paying government jobs, the fine material possessions—all of this was built on the backs of slaves and the labor class. It is wrong for companies to leave the poor and the working classes in the lurch,” he added.
“America could see the simple solutions to its problems if America were not blinded by greed and that old mentality of slavemaster and slave. Both mentalities have to be broken and replaced with a sense of community, humanity and fairness structured on truth and the principles of justice and equality,” Min. Farrakhan observed.
These are the lessons we should embrace as we go against the tide of a heartless society that mocks Jesus by invoking his name and acting against everything that he taught. Let us open our hearts to the mind and message of Jesus the Messiah and follow his example.
Let us keep our dollars in our pockets.
Not spending a dime, forsaking frivolity and boycotting shopping will allow us to redistribute pain inflicted on us by our open enemy.
Acting in accord with the teachings of Jesus the Messiah will allow us to engage in a process of healing and restoring relationships that we can pursue all year round.
—Naba’a Muhammad, editor in chief, The Final Call
