We went to the mall today. Packed with shoppers. We almost never buy anything there other than a shake that we all share from Chik-Fil-A. We take the girls to play on the little play area and peruse the puppies in Pet City and to kill an afternoon without spending more than $5. Isabella had to go to the bathroom and suddenly we were in the back of Macy’s when we started looking at all the nice leather sectionals that were $2000. “When we get our tax return,” Bruce joked. Who has $2000 to spend on one piece of furniture? And that was the sale price, the Presidents’ Day sale.

We started walking out and the girls examined the plate sets, the men’s shirts, the towels and sheets. “Hey, this isn’t the mall, this is like a regular store!” Isabella announced, having never really been inside one there before. Everything was on sale, we could have got some real deals, $20 dress shirts instead of $40, a $15 lingerie Valentine set, already marked down the day after. All because… because why?

Why do we have the day off today? Have we all forgotten? Here we are stuffing ourselves with fast food concoctions and filling our shopping bags with sale items and doing anything but taking a moment to realize why this is a federal holiday. This is the typical American interpretation of a holiday: consumerism.

I’m sure Lincoln and Washington are turning over in their graves right now. What were they fighting for anyway? What have we forgotten in the course of 230 years? Is this really what freedom and equal rights and human sacrifice have all amounted to? A winter clearance of coats and boots in every store countrywide?

Sometimes I ask myself, what has this country come to? How is it that the things that sustain us—the buying and selling of goods—are the same things that destroy us? How can we simultaneously prevent and prepare for a recession, just as Einstein once asked the same question about war?

When I buy anything, I am wrought with guilt. I think about the person in China who made my product and a hundred others like it for a dollar a day. Instantaneously, I think of the store-owners and employees who will be out of work if I don’t buy more. I think of the destruction of natural resources from the production of each item. And I think of how spoiled we all are, how we think we need more than what we need, and how my children’s future will be impacted by this.

But today, as I witnessed sale after sale in honor of Presidents’ Day, all I could think about were arguably the two most influential presidents of all time and their idea of the American Dream. Did Washington read the Declaration of Independence to his suffering troops during the winter at Valley Forge, did Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation and take the first step towards equality, for us to save a few bucks and add to the debt and environmental nightmare that we’ve been swimming in for years? And if this is how we honor our presidents, the leaders of this great nation, where is our country headed?

I can’t answer that question. I can only reach out and take my girls’ hands and lead them out of the mall. Perhaps this is the first and most important step to guiding the next generation in the direction of the real American Dream: the dream our presidents had, once. The one about freedom. Not consumerism.