OPINION:
Not many years in living memory have been as bleak as 2020, but Americans are doing their level best to dispel the gloom during the season of giving. The coronavirus pandemic that dampened Thanksgiving celebrations from coast to coast only sharpened enthusiasm for the ensuing shopping spree of Black Friday. The unfolding holiday period demonstrates there is little market for misery during the most spirit-filled time of the year.
No thanks are due for panicky governors in dozens of states, who tried to give Thanksgiving the feel of confinement by restricting the size of dinner gatherings and threatening arrest of resisters. A long list of major retailers, including the likes of Walmart, Target and Kohl’s, joined the shutdown appeal by keeping their doors closed and shoppers at bay on the day honoring the early Pilgrims and their offering of gratitude.
Undeterred, cyber highways hummed with traffic as homebound shoppers, flush with cash the coronavirus had forced them to conserve, flashed along to make their online purchases. Curbside pickup has proved a winning strategy, allowing customers to gather their goods without hopping from one social-distanced floor sticker to the next at in-store checkout.
Holiday online spending on Thanksgiving Day reached $5.1 billion, a 21.5% increase over last year, according to Google Analytics, and Black Friday sales hit $9 billion, up 21.6%. Small Business Saturday, added to the commercial calendar in 2010, enjoyed sales 545% higher than the previous day as consumers boosted the bottom lines of modest-sized retailers crippled by on-again, off-again coronavirus shutdowns. Receipts from Cyber Monday, when finally tallied, are forecast to add another $11 billion in U.S. business revenue.
Total seasonal sales are projected to range from $755.3 billion-$766.7 billion, according to the National Retail Federation, an increase of as much as 5.2% over 2019. The increase in sales adds an extra holiday jingle in the pockets of families thrown out of work by the springtime spread of the virus.
Commerce is a fundamental form of exchange in which human beings satisfy the needs and wants of themselves and each other. You can’t buy happiness, it is said, but fortunately, it comes free of charge through the act of giving. The gift that is America came at great hardship for the Pilgrim forebears, something that their descendants should remember as they prepare their own holiday offerings.
Moreover, the exertions of contemporary pathfinders are adding to in the brightening spirit of the season. The always-volatile U.S. economy has surged skyward — twice — during the four-year captaincy of President Trump.
Along with rejuvenated prosperity, Mr. Trump has urged citizens to shake off a modern-day taboo and proudly demonstrate holiday cheer by wishing each other a “Merry Christmas.” Even as so-called progressives labor to turn back the pages of history to the pre-Trump era, maintaining that holiday tradition honors his wish to “make America great again.”
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