A Bi-focal view: The inertia of shopping...

A couple of years back, I returned to the east coast after almost 3 decades in Vancouver, so I am familiar with the Boxing Day phenomenon(?)] as alluded to in today's Vancouver Sun:

Those shopping for electronics encountered the longest lines. At Best Buy on Cambie Street, shoppers began lining up at midnight, said spokesman Scott Morris, adding that by 6 a.m. there were about 600 people waiting.

I wouldn't dream of shopping for bargains on Boxing Day, particularly in the packed electronics stores. Bemused is what I am, as I value Boxing Day as a day of rest from a busy or stressful year-end, not as an additional day in which to extend purchasing. But then again, many people do not get that I like to spend hours in my home library reading books and periodicals on Christmas Day or Boxing Day.
  
The Boxing Day frenzy is as recurrent as lint in your navel. There are at least five yawningly predictable news stories that have become cliches in Vancouver media - the mercantile and mercenary tradition is just one:

1. Polar Bear Swim in English Bay on New Year's Day
2. The Vancouver Sun Run in April
3. The fireworks finale in August
4. The leather- and drag-queens from the Pride Parade
5. The over-night Boxing Day line-ups outside electronics mega-stores
   

It's lazy journalism but it is part of the fabric of life in Vancouver. The annual repetition does bring to mind that the same footage could be shown each year - there would be no way to tell as the event does not visibly change. The lining up overnight and the frenzy in the morning are now global events - the world is in a rush 24/7, but why?

Since I have never been addicted to the mass Xmas accumulation addiction or felt the need for more than a handful of gift-giving (actually gift-exchanging), I just don't get it. The pleasure inherent in leaving a warm home on Christmas Day and hauling a lawn chair to the cold downtown streets to start the overnight vigil strikes me as non-Christmasy. The 27th is time enough to look for purported bargains - the stores don't want to lose money, meaning many of the specials are specious. I have worked retail and opening stores as early as 6 a.m. is just cruel to the employees - already mostly poorly paid and with only one day between horrendous crowds. At least, here in Nova Scotia, the stores are closed on Boxing Day, the madness delayed by a day.

That's my screed on Boxing Day. To each his own, but surely people could slow down for more than one day.
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The photo above is from Sydney Australia in 2008, but looks just like the footage I saw today on a Vancouver news broadcast.