What's Da Buzz?

Recently I was asked a question of “What is Black Friday?” It is not that easy to answer when you know that who you are trying to explain it to is not from the USA. I could say just go to this website for your definition, but that wouldn’t be good enough. The reason is the lifestyle choices of the USA are so very different than the Philippines that a basic definition is not good enough.

I will only touch briefly on one definition of it. One definition of it is tied to a stock market crash on September 24, 1869 when speculators wanted to corner the gold market but failed and caused a lot of problems on the stock market. But that isn’t the answer my source is looking for. Jumping right into the answer will only confuse a person more because of the differences in lifestyle and culture.

The USA, like all other countries, has its special set of holidays that it observes for various reasons. Thanksgiving Day is the holiday associated with Black Friday but not for obvious reasons. Thanksgiving Day is an USA holiday that originally was for everyone in the nation to give thanks to God for the blessings they have received. Along the way though, Thanksgiving Day and all of the other holidays have been distorted from their original meanings for the sake of retail profit.

You see it every year at any of the stores. They get in new packages of candy to celebrate Easter with chocolate, gummy eggs and other stuff promoting the Easter Bunny not the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christmas is about Santa Claus, Rudolph, Christmas trees and getting and giving stuff. Thanksgiving is supposedly about family but the big turkey meal is promoted as well as football games, deer hunting and the start of shopping for Christmas. Often the New York parade or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade has all of the floats, bands and other stuff in it and it ends with Santa Claus marking the start of the shopping season.

In the Philippines, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ and celebrating another year of having your family alive and together – not about toys and trinkets from stores. That is why this is a tough question to answer.

Thanksgiving is always on the 4th Thursday in November. The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday. It is when the retail stores give major discounts and sales to lure in a swarm of shoppers to get their stuff (often on credit card) to give away as Christmas gifts. January thru November marks the time when most retail stores do not make ends meet. They often are operating in debt. The Christmas shopping season is when they make the vast majority of their profits.

Black Friday is the start of that holiday shopping season and the start of generating profits for the year. It comes from the term “in the black” which refers to general accounting practices of using black ink to indicate profit or positive numbers and red ink to indicate debt or negative numbers.

Know you know this detail. Whether or not it holds this year with the economic challenges remains to be seen. Our household does not participate in the materialistic part as it has no real meaning outside of making some corporations wealthy.

Thank you,

Anah

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