All of Thanksgiving break I heard:
“There’s no more Thanksgiving!”
“Nothing is sacred anymore!”
“Can’t we get one day without shopping!”
“Call your grandmother!”
The first three are about the increasingly invasive Black Friday sales, which have now cut split Thanksgiving Day now that many stores open their doors as early as 6pm. Advertising would make you think Black Friday is a more important holiday than Thanksgiving itself.
A quick history lesson: Black Friday began in 1961 in Philadelphia, and for over fifty years, it remained a relatively tame shopping day. Since 2005 Black Friday has continuously been the biggest shopping day of the year and the madness surrounding it has grown exponentially. We’ve all seen the jaw-dropping videos of massive herds of shoppers rushing into stores that put employees and customers in danger. The first reported Black Friday related death reached national headlines in 2008 when a Walmart employee was trampled by one of those stampedes we see too often. But rather than taking measures to curb the crowds, stores have only encouraged them. In 2011 stores began opening their doors at midnight after Thanksgiving, and just last year stores started opening their doors the night of Thanksgiving.
Bloomberg reports data shedding light on why stores keep creeping the sales backwards. The article points to data showing that the average adult will spend half of their holiday budget during the weekend blitz of sales and seventy percent of that money is spent in the first two stores they go to–meaning stores that open earlier are more likely to get your business first.
Over 141 million people, almost half of the United States, shopped this Black Friday weekend. This is two million more than last year, but for the first time since 2009, average amount spent fell 3.9 percent to $407.02. Yet, this is still not enough for retailers, which brings us to the moral of the Black Friday story: Black Friday is a scam.
Yes, it’s hype. It’s all hype. The sales aren’t great and crowds aren’t worth fighting through. The day got its name because most retail business happens during the holiday season, so, in the olden days before computers and Starbucks’ red cups, it was the day they went from losing money, “in the red,” to making a profit, “in the black.” Black Friday sales began last week and are now continuing thorough this week, in what some stores are calling “Cyber Week” because it’s after Cyber Monday, which is barely a thing anymore. Stores will take whatever percentage off to get you to buy their crap.
Black Friday sales may be deep discounts, but these sales go on year-round. Every major holiday is accompanied by a major sale. Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July and even Super Bowl Sunday have sales just as impressive as Black Friday, but retailers don’t hype these as much as the day after Thanksgiving because during the rest of the year we don’t have a never-ending list of people other than ourselves to buy for.
These injuries are embarrassing. Nobody should be in danger holiday shopping, especially in danger of other shoppers. Yet stores encourage this behavior. Last Black Friday I went to Macy’s Herald Square in New York City, the largest department store in the US, and it was packed wall-to-wall. And who was there? Tourists buying crap. Racks, you could actually see, were picked over and nobody looked happy.
My Mom has always said to avoid malls after Thanksgiving at all cost because “the amateurs are out.” The amateurs, as she says, “come out of the woodwork” whenever they hear a sale. They’re the type of people that retailers take advantage of this time if year. When you watch the videos of people running into an Urban Outfitters like a swarm of bees and you ask yourself “What the fuck are they getting?!?” It’s the amateurs –the people crazy enough to believe that this is rational behavior.
Just because there’s a sale, it doesn’t mean you need to go. Black Friday is only bad for Thanksgiving if we fall for it. If the whole country decided to stay with their families on Friday and not start Christmas shopping immediately, stores would take the hint and would stop this madness.
Photo courtesy of: TalkAndroid
