Money Days

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Those of us who live in caves (figuratively) have trouble filling all this in.  Not a great fan of capitalism, I find “Black Friday” a troubling add-on to the holiday schedule.  Now I’ve lost track of all the expanding special days: Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday.  Must we celebrate capitalism so much?  I have no problem with non-Christian holidays, but when money becomes the sole basis for special days I have to wonder.  Mammon is a deity of which we’d been warned a couple of millennia ago.  The real irony is that it’s the very religion that posted that warning that now seems most closely related to the capitalistic system that perpetuates its worship.  It wouldn’t be such an issue except that the religion that has bought into the system so readily is the one that is putatively based on its condemnation.

Irony is something for which historians are always on the lookout.  Perhaps this is especially so among historians of religion.  Religion has come to denote a codification of our highest ideals and aspirations.  When did money attained such spiritual status?  It seems that Christianity was the vehicle.  Although it’s most obvious in American politics, the relationship goes back to the whole colonial enterprise.  Once Christianity became an imperial religion under Constantine, its focus began to shift.  Even those splinter groups that started off with higher ideals soon came under the overarching umbrella of the capitalistic system sprung from the teachings of a poor carpenter from Nazareth.  And so we find ourselves amid a creeping array of money-based holidays that provide the secular answer to Advent.

Of course, Advent itself became a season of anticipating the commercialized holiday of Christmas.  And here as the calendar year winds down the financial year hopes for a shot in the arm because economy is the doctrine of this new religious thinking.  And the irony is that the system is set up so those who already have too much get more while those who don’t have enough end up with even less.  Sounds biblical, no?  Ever since my ouster from academia, I’ve had to cash in vacation days to make myself a little semester break.  A body gets used to a certain schedule, and those rhythms are difficult to shake.  As we work our way through pandemic-laced spending holidays I’ve got my eyes on a bit of time off from my small part in supporting this all-consuming machine.  

Ruby Tuesday

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If you’re reading this, you survived Cyber Monday. Not that I personally remember the Middle Ages—I have no desire to return to them—but there was a time when nearly every day of the year was known by a saint’s name. Even as an Episcopalian, nominally Protestant, I was surprised just how many red letter days there were. Black letter days seemed special by comparison. Now, however, our days are named by the shopping expectations. Not only do we have Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we have the moveable feasts of “shopping days before Christmas.” And many other holidays participate in this bonanza dedicated to Mammon. Halloween is a major cash-generating holiday and Valentines can be counted on for buying love. St. Patrick’s for buying green with gold. Ironically, all of these were once, at some remote time, holidays decreed by the church. Many of them are even older than that, going back to pagan times, but religious nonetheless.

In a sluggish economy such times are indeed anticipated. Still, I don’t hear of the one percenters suffering during these difficult times. “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette once was supposed to have said. Cakes are celebratory desserts, of course. We make them everyday occurrences with birthdays that should, in theory, keep the river of cash flowing all year long. The great corporate cathedrals require the offerings of the average citizen, and they insist on far more than a tithe. Then the investment firms complain that people don’t think ahead and save their money for retirement. We see many who live long enough to experience want in their declining years. There should be an app for that.

I wonder if there is something much deeper going on. Those who run so fast usually have something from which they wish to hide. There is the story of King Herod who, according to popular reconstruction, tried to buy the favor of his subjects by monumental building. Herod was not a popular king, and he had a reputation for being bloodthirsty when enraged. It is difficult to verify, but the basics of the story still ring true; when his way of running society was threatened he decided to kill the innocents. Such stories, one might hear a pontiff declare, fall within the genre of the folktale, the story told to make a point. What might that point be? Might it not be that each day is itself a gift and that spending money is not the only way to make time sacred? Of course, as long as you’re online, why not just PayPal your way to true happiness?

A techno-log on Cyber Monday.