Auto traffic was light yesterday on the local roads, but I didn't go anywhere near Valley Fair/Santana Row, so I don't know if those places were packed or not. I didn't go to Target or Walmart either.

Black Friday in the SF Bay Area is unreal. The fact is that the Upside Down is not somewhere else; we are living the Upside Down. The commemoration of the Nativity of Our Lord has been transformed into a secularized, inoffensive festivity of Christmas, with no connection to the Passion or the Resurrection. (How long before they toss away Santa Claus as a symbol of patriarchy or replace him with some gender-neutral figure?)

"For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." (Phil 3:18-19)

Silicon Valley is marked by the pursuit of wealth and the increasingly difficult to obtain level of bourgeois comfort, the primary good shared by the disparate inhabitants of the area to the detriment of community. There is no social manifestation of materialism or consumerism without corresponding vices, and ignorance of the true good does not preclude the development of vice. We run away from death and avoid thinking about it, but death is certain to visit us, without needing a team of flying reindeer.

Even for many Christians their Gospel has been replaced by Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: God loves us so much that He wanted to be with us in the form of Christ, because we are such special snowflakes.

"When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." (Mark 2:17)