Over the past three or four years we have been seeing first hand and hearing second hand how nice it is to shop as the Christmas season draws to its conclusion.
Despite the crowds and the looming dead line of December 25th, people, both shoppers and salesmen seem to be infused with for lock of a better phrase the Christmas Spirit.
That is not so unusual it is a happy time of year but what seems to be different especially over the last few years is the deep decline in general nastiness that also seemed to go hand in glove with the late Christmas rush.
Of course that is mostly by way of anecdotes. There is nothing newsworthy about niceness or common courtesy or politeness.
Where there is a story is of people being nasty but lately at least towards the end of the season there has been a drop in those.
Yes there has been a strong up tick in the beginning of the season detailing the worst of human nature. Black Friday is what it is called.
We have never gone out on Black Friday and we aren’t the only ones by far. According to statistics 90 percent of Americans don’t participated in that orgy of greed and avarice.
Then in a conversation with a friend we began to ponder an interesting idea.
Perhaps there is only so much nastiness to go around and the number of nasty people is limited. And because of Black Friday they are all concentrated in just one terrible day of the year.
Perhaps corporate and individual greed have conspired to give the 90 percent of us a very nice present– a relatively peaceful holiday season.
We are sure they didn’t do it on purpose but thanks anyway.
We are old enough to remember when franchises were new as were big box chains.
Now a days one can travel from one end of this country to the other and eat in the same restaurants, shop in the same stores as if one is not traveling at all.
But just because that is the way things are does not mean that is the way things will always be.
It would be interesting that all the new federal regulation and oversight from health care to raising the minimum wage will have unintended consequences.
While it is easy to strike a nameless faceless corporation it isn’t easy to strike Joe’s Deli especially when Joe is the dad or uncle or friend and the workers know almost as well as Joe just how good or bad things are.
And while it is easy to see thousands of employees as numbers in a system the smaller work force becomes people.
Perhaps we are at the return of the age Mom & Pop where no hamburger taste exactly the same again.