If California is once again leading the US in trends, it looks like a relatively real "War on Christmas" goes into campaign season on Thanksgiving, and the weapon of choice for serious combatants is pepper spray.

            So let us meditate on "Black Friday's" beginning on a Thursday night for Thanksgiving 2011, and marked in Porter Ranch, CA, by a Walmart shopper's applying the martial principles of surprise and technological advantage and using pepper spray on the opposition to achieve her immediate war aim of a discounted Xbox.

                        * Jesus cautions that he didn't come "to bring peace on earth […] but a sword" (Matthew 10.34 [Luke 12.51]), but the usual Christmas vision is Messiah as "prince of peace" (Isaiah 9.6), in line with the teachings of The Sermon on the Mountain (Matthew 5). Jesus's church has pretty consistently preached against greed, either the first or second worst— after pride — among The Seven Deadly Sins. Using violence to further greed, seems an extreme example of not getting the point.

                        * Much has been made of how much the Occupy _____ movement has cost cities and US society. What are the costs for security (etc.) for "Black Friday"?

                        * If some of the most effective warfare in the 21st century is economic, the most effective "War on Christmas" may be its increasing commercialization, now moving into a "War on Thanksgiving" and, arguably, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, with early skirmishing for Halloween.

 

 

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POSTSCRIPT: A newer report, as of 28 Nov. 2011, quotes an LA police detective as saying, "There was a stampede at Walmart from people getting Xbox games for half off. [...] People were getting stampeded and trampled. [...] This woman may have fired her pepper spray in self-defense."

         I apologize for accusing so quickly the woman with the pepper spray — however odd it once was to go Christmas shopping armed — but will allow for now my meditation to stand.