I am a person who gets into a routine easily. I like to figure a good thing to do and a good way to do it and then stick with my figuring. So, the odd Thursday holiday springing up after a more or less normal beginning to the week gets my attention. And the odd Friday hanging around afterwards is another unusual feature of the holiday.
It seems natural to me that an energetic, nervously mobile group like the Americans, would want to find something to do with that odd Friday. When I was a kid, special sales on George Washington's birthday (actually February 22) were notable for being especially low priced. Somehow - and I imagine the full history is laid out somewhere - that odd Friday got to be a sales day, too. The sales start early in the morning, 6 AM. No, 2 AM. No, Midnight.
Of course, more and more stores want to start special attraction sales as early as 8 PM on Thanksgiving day. No, 6 PM. I just received an email from the largest online retailer in the world advertising special, wonderful, amazing real-deal deals right now, at 10:08 AM on Thanksgiving Day. I feel confident that if I click on the right buttons, I can indeed buy the amazing X for the astounding price of Y at this very time.
When I was a kid, I had heard of Black Monday, a bad day in the stock market in 1929. It was a name for an unpleasant day, for many much worse than "unpleasant" and the effects of the market crashes at that time lasted for many years and affected many parts of the world. So, how this odd Friday after Thanksgiving got to be called "Black", seems to be in some dispute. I can understand it being a sober day after a crowd of shoppers stampeded into a store in 2008 so violently that they killed a store employee. But the name seems to stem from the sales which are hoped to put the businesses in the "black" (profits) or from the inconvenience of extra traffic and crowds lured out that day by the sales.
I have seen more than one reference to America's 'orgy of consumerism' on the day after Thanksgiving. I don't know much about orgies of the sexual kind and I have never heard any of my experienced and sophisticated friends say they know much about them either. "Consumerism" and general consumption are broad terms that seem to be reserved for statements complaining about waste, poor judgment and childish fascination with cheap junk. As I watch the struggle for small businesses against very large ones and the battle between this very large one and that very large one, I feel sympathy for the shopper who is simply hoping for just the right Christmas gift for each loved one. Just like the protester who drives a gasoline engine to a protest against 'big oil', we all enjoy and take pride in our possessions of many kinds, including gifts that will give each family member and friend delight.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
