The why of Black Friday

In the United States, the day after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the gift-buying season leading up to Christmas and Hanukkah (and, more recently, Kwanzaa). It's hugely important to merchants, who tend to make the money that makes the year profitable from the end of November to December 24. Calling the day "Black Friday" seems to have started as an observation of the crowds filling the sidewalks in Philadelphia as they went from store to store.

I was getting ready to hold forth on how this US event has leaked into the assumptions and practices of Canadian merchants and consumers...but I found that the excellent Tim Bousquet had gotten there ahead of me.

Tim, a super journalist, runs a website called The Halifax Examiner. You can subscribe there to a daily newsletter with juicy information and observations; for a modest fee you can subscribe to the site and get access to the really powerful articles where Tim fully deploys his investigative and writing skills. A site like this restores my faith in the art of journalism.

On Black Friday and consumerism, Tim touches on the counter-suggestion of Buy Nothing Day, and how it is utopian at best. But he continues:

But Buy Nothing Day is important all the same because it introduces thinking into the equation.The point isn't to rag on consumers per se, but rather to ask broader questions: How'd we ever get into the situation where people flocking to malls to buy crap they don't need on credit is the foundation of the economy? What can we do about it? How do we introduce values like economic justice, environmental protection and simple respect for craftsmanship?

What he said. And he said more than what I just quoted. Go look for yourself.