BLACK FRIDAY DEALS

Whatever happened to Black Friday, that all-important shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving. “Brick and mortar” retailers offered one-day specials, sometimes at ridiculously low prices, beginning early in the morning or even late on Thanksgiving Day. Some people got up early on Friday (some people never went to bed) and waited in line for the store to open in order to compete for those special deals. I suppose if you were looking for certain gift items in electronics and toys, it was worth it. At any rate, some people thought it was fun and enjoyed shopping that way. Not me. I cherish my sleep, and I don’t enjoy fighting over stuff.

Mike and I only participated in a Black Friday event once. He saw a drill he wanted advertised at a hardware store, so we got up and went. He readily found the item, and then we stood in line for 20 minutes in order to buy it. No one fought us for the drill. Sounds rather ho-hum, doesn’t it? And it was, but Mike was happy with the drill.

Black Friday now seems to have morphed into something else. Every day I have email messages wanting me to buy some Black Friday deal. I know, I know. It’s just a way of saying that this is a super-duper deal, perhaps the best of the season, but to be certain I’m not wrong in my thinking that actual Black Friday sales are a thing of the past, I googled it. What came up was “Black Friday deals are here at J.C. Penney’s, Walmart, Amazon, and Kohl’s,” and I’m sure that’s not a comprehensive list of retailers. But if Black Friday no longer happens on Black Friday, why do we still call it Black Friday? I think it’s time to let it go and call these holiday specials by another name.

I also googled, “What killed Black Friday,” and discovered I’m not the first to ask. They say that online shopping and competing promotions contributed to its demise, not to mention the pandemic, supply chain shortages, and worker shortages in the stores. Though the article didn’t say so, the hordes of shoppers sometimes resulted in mob mentality with ensuing violence, and these days, maybe we think twice about getting involved.

Here's an informative statement from Almanac.com: “In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the second-to-last Thursday. It was the tail-end of the Depression, and Roosevelt’s goal was to create more shopping days before Christmas and to give the economy a boost. However, many people continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November, unhappy that the holiday’s date had been meddled with. You could argue, however, that this helped create the shopping craze known as Black Friday.”

By 1941, Thanksgiving Day as a U.S. federal holiday was firmly established on the fourth Thursday of November.

So you see, the importance of holiday shopping to our economy has been a factor for many years.

What about Cyber Monday? Will we have Cyber Monday this year? Or are we already having it and just don’t know it? KW