It is possible to be critical of the great machine that is Black Friday without shaming people who need to shop during that period if they want to provide holiday gifts for their families.

I talk frequently about growing up poor in America, because it colors everything about my adult life, from my dental health to my relationship with money. And one thing we don't talk about much is what it means to be a poor kid and have a relationship with Santa.

A huge, MASSIVE effort has been made to divorce Santa Claus, the cuddly, marketable, secular side of Christmas, from the religious origins of the holiday. Santa is absolutely part of the Christian tradition, but he gets sold to everyone through movies, books, and television.

(This is part of why even people like me, who are not Christian, but who grew up in the USA, are culturally Christian. My house lacked religion. We still had Santa, so we still celebrated Jesus's birthday.)

And because Santa is EVERYWHERE, being sold to all the children, and Santa is MAGIC, Santa will put your wish list back together from confetti or ash if he has to, Santa is basically a god, even poor kids have hopes as Christmas approaches.

And Santa's gifts are supposed to be based on inherent goodness and quality of character, not how much money your parents have! So how do you think the poor kids feel when they come back to school after break, and find themselves surrounded by the fact that even SANTA hates them?

Even if you're old enough to know that Santa isn't real, coming back to school having received a handful of walnuts, an orange, socks, and one My Little Pony, while the girl who bullies you got twelve Barbies and a bike feels...well, it feels like judgment.

No, it's not good for children to tie their self-worth to material possessions. But that's what we teach through the Santa story. If you're good, you'll get gifts. If you're bad, you won't.

So poor kids must be inherently bad.

My middle sister managed to conflate Santa with Jesus somehow, and came home from school in 2nd grade sobbing because she was going to hell because Santa hated her.

When my reasonably well-off friends have kids, I regularly beg them, if they're going to do Santa, to only have Santa give one or two gifts a year. Let the rest be from Mom and Dad. Just remember that my sister was never unique, and don't use Santa as a hammer.

But we live in the world we live in, and if low-income parents have to shop Black Friday to give their children the Christmas they've been told to expect by literally all the media around them, we shouldn't judge.