Black Friday Shopping

So, did you go shopping on Black Friday this year? In my last post, I shared my thoughts on how we might begin to look at Thanksgiving as a day for hitting one’s financial restart button. Were you able to resist the temptation of the Black Friday sales?

Despite my own post the other day, I have to admit that even I struggled a bit. WalMart had a nice deal on a digital camera and I had been thinking about purchasing one for quite some time. There were also other deals like a handful of appliances going for as little as $3.00. I really had to think about my motives for wanting to buy that camera and the appliances. What I found was that the lure of being part of the crowd was the only real impulse pushing me to buy. I did not need the camera, I merely wanted it, and I wanted the appliances only because they were dirt cheap.

 
For some families, Black Friday is indeed part of a tradition. It is in fact a time when they get together to wait in lines as a family. Shopping for them is as much a bonding experience as the Thanksgiving holiday itself. But for me, Black Friday is purely about consumerism, the lifestyle that I am learning to do away with. So, I didn’t go shopping yesterday despite the temptation.

What I am also realizing about Black Friday is that it is beginning to have no limits. Black Friday doesn’t start on Friday anymore. Perhaps when the trend happens online, it is less invasive to disrupting traditional family time. Amazon, for example, began holding its Black Friday specials not too soon after Halloween this year. That wasn’t so bad. When WalMart announced that it would begin its holiday sales on Thanksgiving Day, it felt like the retailing giant and all its counterparts who followed had taken things too far. I respect Kmart for keeping its hours reasonable this year despite its competition with WalMart and others. It is possible for a business to be successful without merely giving lip service to their commitment to families and communities.

Did you go shopping on Black Friday this year? Or on Thanksgiving Day? Please share your story. I would really love to know what everyone thinks about this sense of consumerism encroaching more and more on all of our holidays. New Year’s Day seems to be the last holiday not tied to some sort of mandatory shopping frenzy. What are your thoughts?