Let me just start by saying that I hope God is watching over our little baby birds. Sweet Cheeks (my parakeet) died many years ago. Then, late last night, my sister’s parakeet (Snow) died unexpectedly. It was awful. Not only did this happen on Thanksgiving, but she was just a baby! I’m praying that all of our lost loved ones are in Heaven right now having some kind of family, friend, animal, pet party. Hopefully…
In other news, today is Black Friday (as if we didn’t already kn0w). Most people think this day is a great day to get sales and enjoy shopping with loved ones. For many of us, it’s a time-honored tradition to go out with generations of our family members to find steals that we don’t actually need but decide to buy for Christmas or just for the heck of it. Here’s the problem that I see: Black Friday is now more about the fad and the mania than the tradition or even the sales. Since I, and my entire family, veto Black Friday shopping, this also becomes one of the most boring days of the year EVER. I would love to get my Christmas shopping done, but I’m not supporting this nonsense. I would like to do homework, but that’s all I’ve been doing for the last several hours. After a while, with the rest of the family napping or watching old movies, I get bored. It happens I guess.
Anyway, since my boredom is causing me issues, I just thought I would write a list of the reasons that Black Friday is an awful tradition that we should no longer support. It’s not that I do not want stores and people to make money; it’s not that traditions are bad things. It’s just…
- The point of vacation is to sleep! None of us truly sleep on Black Friday if we plan to go out and shop for the true bargains.
- Let’s face it: stores open too early! It might be part of the thrill to wake up at 1am to go shopping, but at the end of the day, it just adds to the anxiety and stress of this whole manic situation. Employees are exhausted and grumpy, shoppers are pushy and rude. It’s just bad.
- Most of the bargain items are pieces of junk! Companies (manufacturers in particular) are not stupid enough to actually give all of these products away for less than half of normal prices! Not if they want to earn any money at all. And we are all (or we all SHOULD be) smart enough to know that there is no purpose to Black Friday if companies didn’t just want more and more money.
- Needless to say, Thanksgiving is the day before Black Friday. Our family members are unable to truly enjoy the holiday because they have to be at work by midnight (or earlier). Way to ruin our Thanksgiving people!
- Participating in Black Friday in ANY way (unless you are forced to work by your employer) makes you a complete hypocrite. Let’s all sit around and be thankful for the things that we are given. Let’s spend an entire day thanking God for the simple things in our life that make it worth living each day. Let’s acknowledge the fact that we are better fed, better clothed, and better prepared for the world in many ways than our counterparts in other poverty-stricken countries. Let’s even spend time donating our time and money/food to food banks to feed the homeless of America; surely they deserve a good, hot meal too! But then wait: less than 24 hours later, we are scrambling around a crazy shopping mall looking for the cheapest toaster or television that we can find! Let’s spend hundreds of dollars on Christmas gifts, and gifts for ourselves, when we just thanked God for the house, food, and clothing that we already do have. After we acknowledge that we take things for granted and are trying to focus on being thankful for them, let’s turn around and become part of this craze that sweeps the nation, “forcing” us to run around like maniacs spending our money frivolously and for things that we really don’t need.
- Have we noticed that Black Friday is now Cyber Monday? And, starting last year, Black Friday became Cyber Monday AND Tacky Thursday (or so I call it). It’s nothing like sucking up a perfectly good holiday by shopping and fighting for deals. Hence the term tacky. Next thing you know, there will be Worthless Wednesday, Tumultuous Tuesday and Stealing Saturday. (Yes, I just made all of these up, but the name sum up my thoughts on all of these sale days!) Something that was a single-day tradition is now almost a week tradition. Plus then you have to remember that the same mania (though not as horrific) occurs every Columbus Day, Labor Day, President’s Day, and Christmas Eve/New Year’s Day.
- Finally, and probably most importantly, people are actually injured! People DIE! If companies are smart (and we can see how many are not), they would not participate in this manic insanity just for some money. It is NEVER worth ANY amount of money for people to die and be injured. Sure, it’s not the company’s fault that their shoppers injure others, but it is ridiculous that they would even take that risk, their fault or not.
End rant. Have a truly “Black” Friday everyone!
~Me
Thoughts of a Christian Girl 