Christmas shopping seems to feel no ill effects from Black Friday orgy
Americans are said to spend roughly $900 on Christmas each year. That’s on top of last month’s orgy of consumerism — Black Friday, right after Thanksgiving. But it’s not just Americans. By some estimates, 130 countries participate in the world’s biggest secular festival, the act of shopping on Black Friday. Excerpts from This Week, Those Books. Sign up at https://thisweekthosebooks.substack.com/ and get the post and podcast the day it drops
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The Big Story:
In Bangladesh, it’s Fatafati (or awesome) Friday and in Costa Rica, Viernes Negro. But almost everywhere else — from Austria to India, Slovenia to South Africa — Black Friday is exactly that.
It’s an orgy of buying and selling…
This Week, Those Books:
The book that shows Black Friday’s link to the increasing commercialisation of Christmas.
Greed is good, kinda, screamed this cult novel, which became a film.
The Backstory:
Black Friday started in the US in the 1960s and became a success despite retailers’ efforts to rebrand the shopping bonanza Big Friday.
It’s linked to feverish pre-Christmas shopping after Americans have gobbled down the turkey and trimmings on Thanksgiving, which is always the fourth Thursday of November.
…
When Black Friday became a marker of America’s so-called “Christmas creep”, ie crass commercialisation many weeks ahead of Dec 25, large swaths of the world adopted it as an excuse for binge shopping…
This Week’s Books:
Black Friday and the Christmas Creep: The Commercialization of Christmas
By: Karl Ammons
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Year: 2015
This book, of which I’ve only been able to find an online sample, stands alone. It’s the one read that actually speaks to what is indisputable about Black Friday: It is an attempt to get you Christmas shopping in November…
He says that the earliest known usage of Black Friday as a post-Thanksgiving shopping day appears in the Dec 1, 1961 issue of an American paper, The Shortsville-Manchester Enterprise. However, the term was slow to penetrate the cultural consciousness…
Confessions of a Shopaholic
By: Sophie Kinsella
Publisher: The Dial Press (Penguin Random House)
Year: 2001
Chick lit, yes. A kind of Bridget Jones Diary for shopaholics (and financial journalists), yes. A fun read, yes.
The heroine, Rebecca (Becky) Bloomwood, is gormless but knowing. She knows financial bullshit. Heck, she indulges in it herself.
And yet, here’s the twist in the tale. Becky is a financial journalist, paid, as she says, “to tell other people how to organize their money”. But she doesn’t live that life…Routinely maxing out her credit card on frivolous buys…
Choice quotes:
“I honestly feel as though I’ve run an obstacle course to get here. In fact, I think, they should list shopping as a cardiovascular activity. My heart never beats as fast as it does when I see a ‘reduced by 50 percent’ sign”.
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Originally published at This Week, Those Books
