David McElroy

“I need to show you something.”

That’s what I heard as a friend came to sit down where I was eating. She sounded serious, but I didn’t know what might be going on.

She looked around to be sure nobody was watching. Then she held her arm close to her body to shield it from other people and then turned the arm over. I saw several small cut marks. It was shocking to see, even though there weren’t nearly as many cuts as shown in the picture above.

I knew that my friend had been having problems and needed counseling. I knew she had done minor cutting earlier in her teen-age years. I even knew she had been having more problems lately. But I didn’t know she was feeling like doing this again. I asked her why she was doing it.

“I wanted to feel something,” she said.

I’ve read a lot about cutting in an effort to understand it. I’ve encountered it before — all in teen-age girls — and everyone I’ve seen it affect has seemed to get over it in time, usually with good counseling. From everything I’ve read and the few I’ve talked with who’ve been affected by it, it seems that the people who go through this have been experiencing intense, out-of-control emotions. They seem to have repressed the intensity of the hurtful emotions they feel so much that they end up numb.

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I wasn’t out shopping when stores opened for “Black Friday” sales Thursday evening, and I won’t be shopping Friday. I’m uncomfortable with the out-of-control consumerism of our culture — which I’ve written about before — but I don’t care if that’s what you want. The choices you make about material things reflect your values, not mine.

There seem to be increasingly sharp battle lines between those who want to tell you when you should be allowed to shop and those who are eager to get the best deals available. Many people have been angry for a long time that so many people turn the day after Thanksgiving into an orgy of commercialism, but they’re really upset now that stores are opening earlier and earlier — bringing opening times all the way up to 8 p.m. Thursday at Walmart and 9 p.m. at Target. Other stores are opening at similarly early times.

For millions of people, this is a good thing. They wouldn’t line up as they do if they didn’t want to shop. And the random Thanksgiving night shoppers I talked to were thrilled. They said they had long been accustomed to getting up very early Friday morning, and they appreciated being able to do the same shopping Thursday night instead. The folks I talked with at the Target near my house Thursday night seemed like very happy customers.

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Each year at this time, school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating.

It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving’s real meaning.

The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

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