Today my son and I went to the Memorial Day Program at the Grandview Cemetery. He asked if he could go to a particular store that I have particular negative feelings about in quest of the latest Lego set (but having grandparents that live far away, he is never short of having a gift card to this store). Once we experienced the march of the bag pipes, the Color Guard, the Honor Guard, a variety of other groups (that I posted on an earlier blog), and the death-frightening firing squad (that's what they call themselves on the program flyer), I decided: NO.
I'm thinking of banning shopping from certain holidays. Never mind that I try to shop at our local Ten Thousand Villages (http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/home.php) for fair trade items (http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/php/fair.trade/fair.trade.fairprice.php) for those special birthdays and thank yous.
Today being Memorial Day, we are suppose to be thinking of those in service who paid the ultimate price: his or her life. Think of one individual in your life (perhaps this is real for you) and this one person is missing because he or she chose to defend our country. This person will miss weddings and children being born, baseball games and cookouts (as many of us did today), and will miss graduations and funerals. They never come back, and should we be "cheapening" their death by the "big Memorial Day sales?"
Can you really not live with yourself if you miss out on a 40% of all shoes at Macy's? Half-off everything in the store from noon to midnight at Kohls?
Alas, that Lego set will still be there tomorrow. And that store that I hate, it'll still be there in the morning. But today, I chose to honor our fallen by not handing one dollar to a store that thinks it's more important to make a sale, than to know what Memorial Day is truly about.
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