Black Friday

After another very nice Thanksgiving meal with my family, including my little sister, in from Chi-town, I wake this Friday morning being blasted about the head & neck about Black Friday.  Let me just state for the record that I DO NOT DO Black Friday.  I am not up at 2 o'clock in the morning like my co-worker, camping out at Walmart with her hubby hoping to get the latest cheap-o laptop/net book, nor am I hanging around Old Navy hoping to grab that elusive pair of special jeans that are only available between this 2-minute long, deep-discount, special, door-buster, Black Friday monogrammed time.  Let me state unequivocally that I really HATE Black Friday--it just makes me cringe.  All that Black Friday serves to do is remind me that after we have all given thanks for the wonderful things that we have in front of us: family, friends, etc., off we go re-affirming that we are a superficial, consumerist society grabbing as many new, shiny, electronic, Kaye jewelery encrusted gadgets that we can before the highly commercialized, now-meaningless all-consuming BIG-ASSED holiday is upon us in a month's time (especially since all of these lovely stores began decorating for X-mas even before Halloween 2011 was a memory).  OK, yeah, I'm sounding a little shrewish but you know, when did we turn what was supposed to be an extra day of family football & turkey leftover time into the biggest crazed-induced consumerist holiday?  I guess we need to extend the Black Friday holiday to "Small Business Saturday" & "Cyber Monday" too. You can accuse me of being a "Bah! Humbug!" scrooge if you'd like & I'll agree with you. But I really wish that people would pause in the action to think that this behavior just re-affirms what a lot of OWS is all about--paying more money to the corporate bigwigs.  I'm just saying.  


This post is also inspired by my sister's blog post about her friend "Ivy" who is being made to work the overnight shift at one of the bigwig corporate stores on Black Friday...she points out that we should thank these folks who are working these shifts--think of them & the sacrifice that they make--I agree.  Pause for a moment in your feeding frenzy to thank them, smile & be nice even if that last jewel-encrusted gadget you just reached for was snatched out of your hand by the grandma across the sale table.


What am I doing this Black Friday you ask?  Well, I am hanging with my lil' sis--we rarely have time together JUST us so we plan to have lunch together & do what we'd do together regardless of the date--go shopping at small boutiques.  I guess in one sense the fact that it is Black Friday will garner better deals then normally offered at these stores but that is coincidence. Black Friday is secondary to being with my sister & doing what we'd do anyway.  I'm just hugely thankful to have that one-to-one time together--isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about?