Let us give thanks, Black Friday has nothing to do with religion
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Version 0 of 1. Nope. I’ve just looked through my Book of Common Prayer, and there is no special liturgy for today. Not even in Common Worship, the modern collection of official Church of England services which, despite its name, aims to cater for all tastes and occasions. Black Friday, that excitable new entry into an already crowded month, is almost unique in having no relationship with a religious festival. No, Thanksgiving is not a religious festival, nor is it ours: it might be wrong to be complacent, but its over-indulgent bonhomie is one of the few US traditions that has failed to take root in UK soil. Until now, this is how it all works. A medieval church, maybe an abbey, holds a service once a year to mark the Feast of the Holy Sandal (say). Pilgrims arrive in the town, and need feeding and watering. Local merchants sniff the money and start producing special sandals. Soon, there are little leather sandals on a rope to hang round your neck. The abbot will bless them for you, for a small consideration in the collection plate. Next, the merchants figure that the product doesn’t have to be sandal-related, really. A sandal-shaped loaf does well, a sandal-branded scrip flies of the shelf, and Sandal Day is up and running. Next, any old tat can be palmed off on the pilgrims, who are primed by now to come to town expecting to shop, or the medieval equivalent (stall?). Finally, a few centuries later, the reason behind Sandal Day is largely forgotten. The priest’s descendant (not the abbot’s, since the Reformation) is still there, working through the Holy Sandal liturgy, but the congregation is small. And not only small but poor: the Sandal Day pilgrims, whose donations funded the grandiose church that now needs expensive repairs, have departed. The shopping malls, on the other hand, are heaving, as the pilgrims’ descendants seek ever more complicated machines for pouring hot water on coffee grounds. Now, though, we have an upstart day with no history and no message beyond “buy lots of things because they’re cheap”. At least Blue Cross Day, short-lived because the bargains stopped being bargains, sounded vaguely religious. Black Friday sounds more like something devised by the opposition. The church called the darkest day in its calendar Good Friday. The name is not the work of an upbeat early church marketing outfit – “it’s a tough sell, team: the saviour of the world subjected to an agonising death. Any ideas?” – but, instead, a profound theological point about the joyful consequence of the crucifixion. Not that any service I’ve ever been to on Good Friday has been anything but gloomy. We have just been through the worst example of religious hijacking. The evening before All Hallows’ Day, when the church remembers those who have died in the faith, has completely swamped the day itself, again with the help of the Americans. A few of the faithful still attend All Saints’ Day services (the new name), but their offspring are most likely still in bed, smudges of black eyeliner and fake blood on their pillows. By and large, the church might well be relieved to have nothing to do with yet another spending spree. It has, after all, been singularly useless at exploiting the merchandising possibilities of its various festivals. For one thing, it would prefer the shops to be shut on all its big days: Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, er, Sunday. For another, it has this quaint idea that a big religious feast requires a period of preparation that doesn’t take place in a supermarket. Hence the 40 days of austerity in Lent before Easter, and the season of Advent, which starts on Sunday. When the feast finally arrives, the idea goes, it comes at a time of heightened expectation, not as some sort of jaded afterthought. Despite all this, I sense a weary sadness in the church about Black Friday. Nothing wrong with providing people with a bargain, but the idea of manufacturing out of nothing a sense of urgency and competition does nobody any favours, not even those with the beefiest shoulders or the fastest web connection – and, by the time you read this, a new fridge. Concern for the Earth and its creatures lies at the heart of all these old religious ceremonies, and to see commercialism drop one notch lower can please no one who has any degree of love for the planet and its people, especially in an organisation that offers its best merchandise – a baby in a manger, a man on a cross – for free. |