Corporate America, in its beneficence, infinite wisdom, and noble pursuit of perpetual profit, has finally created a holiday truly worth celebrating, a holiday that honors what really matters—acquisition. This holiday, currently known as Black Friday, will now be called “Thanksgetting.”
Thanksgetting is replacing Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a sentimental, Pollyannaish occasion that showcases the anti-capitalist, anti-business, and anti-profit concepts of gratitude and generosity. As one ruthless and very successful landlord once said, “Generosity is great, as long as someone else pays for it!”
Given that modality, it should be obvious to today’s young, aggressive, profit-driven entrepreneurs that outdated, commerce-killing ideas like Thanksgiving have no place in a highly competitive global economy.
A typical Thanksgiving involves families gathering to give thanks for all the good that they have received over the past year. Oddly enough, they do it without getting paid. The only rational explanation of such bizarre behavior is that a ton of money is spent on opulent eats, like big turkey dinners, thus pushing up the bottom line of savvy food-service investors.
The transition from Thanksgiving to Thanksgetting should not be difficult. As Thanksgetting is about acquisition, or what is colloquially known as greed, it’s very easy to fill the holiday with self-serving, fiscally rewarding activities.
The traditional Thanksgetting generally begins with a pre-dawn trip to a brick-and-mortar grocery store, to hoard and purchase as many sale-priced items as possible. It’s wise to prepare for physical conflict with other Thanksgetting hoarders. A cane may be discreetly used to beat away competing shoppers. A gas mask and a boxer’s helmet should be worn to fend off a competitor’s pepper spray or sucker punches. Standing near store entrances should be avoided, as trampling by crowds of frenzied hoarders can be extremely dangerous.
After returning home from the shopping fun, it’s a Thanksgetting custom for many hoarders to immediately sell some of their items online at a tidy profit. While waiting for buyers to chime in, many Thanksgetting celebrants go old-school and prepare a traditional turkey feast for family guests, with a Thankgetting twist—family guests pay for the meals up front. A turkey feast with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans and cranberry sauce can command up to $90 a plate If wine and pumpkin pie are included, the meal could garner $50 more per person.
In some cases, it’s customary to charge guests a nominal home entrance fee, to defray the cost of utilities. It’s also prudent to offer your own independent ride-sharing service, so that inebriated guests make it home safely—for a fee, of course.
Thanksgetting is also a great day for opportunistic landlords to send out eviction notices to all those under-market tenants. That high-tech gravy train can’t run forever, so Thanksgetting is the perfect time to jump on board and grab some rich renters.
Restaurant and bar owners also can also enjoy the ride while it lasts—$500-per-person dinners and $50 cocktails are nothing to techies making $250,000 a year.
It’s annoying to hard-driving, goal-oriented Thanksgetting progressives that obsolete institutions like Thanksgiving seem to disappear slowly, stifling growth and profits. If absolutely necessary, a Thanksgetting celebrant—or a rebellious Thanksgiving holdout—can pay homage to the dying institution simply by taking a moment to think of someone other than themselves.
Gil Michaels requests that you pass the turkey gravy, for a fee, at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gil-Michaels.
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