These few weeks, our home has been papered with flyers, circulars, postcards, and ads all promoting the same thing – Black Friday.
I have Black Friday fatigue.
I’ve never really done Black Friday. I've gone. I've had the experience. I grew up with women who could strip an annual sale down to the racks, so I learned from the best.
My aunt was a premiere shopper – on Black Friday and every other day of the year. She loved the rush and the thrill of the hunt. She had no issue waiting in line for hours if it meant she was going to get what she wanted. She didn’t complain about crowds, prices, overheated stores, and observed the number one rule of Roadhouse – be nice, until it’s time to no longer be nice. She was sly and stealthy. She’d knew when stores had restock days and kept an eye out for those moments when stockers were dismantling displays for new items.
The legend was that she was able to score one of the original Cabbage Patch Kids, not because she waited in line or snatched a wig on Black Friday, but because she was at a K-Mart on a random Tuesday, and quietly pushed it into her cart and fled to the checkout before any other shoppers could catch on that Cabbage Patch Kids were on the shelves.
Black Friday has changed, but right after I married, it was at its peak. People stood in line outside of Walmart and Best Buy waiting for midnight to roll around to ensure they get the best deal on a TV, DVD player, phone, or more. Hubs loves a deal and has no problem waking up at the crack of dawn to find it. He would head out under the cover of darkness while I was still in the bed, happily avoiding it. Later he’d wake me when he returned with his finds, laying them on the bed with the joy of all the savings. He asked me to go with him a time or two, but it was not my scene.
Now, he shops, I wrap. We’re both happy.
My children, however, have always been Black Friday curious. They see the ads and offers. They’ve heard the legends. They marked it on our calendar as if it was a national holiday.
This bugged me.
I don’t know. I didn’t like the idea that they would elevate it to such a mythical rite of passage when it’s really just an uncomfortable experience for most and a rush for the savings-junkies. Not everything was for everyone, and for me Black Friday was the equivalent of spending a weekend in Vegas– loud, flashy, crowded, potential to spend more money than intended under the illusion of a deal.
And it’s probably for the most selfish reason of all: Black Friday is for buying gifts for others. It reeks of obligation. I have to make this person happy with this specific thing and I can only have access or be able to afford it if I wake up at the crack of dawn and get into a fist fight with a mother of three to get it. I feel like After-Christmas shopping is preferable because it’s a day of returns, exchanges, deals, and resolving any missing items on a wish list. It’s a day of forgiveness and resolution.
I tried to reason with my kids. I even tried to explain how most people don’t actually go out and pillage for TVs anymore, when they can get the same deal if not better online and have it delivered to their home. I didn’t work. They wanted to go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving.
So I relented. But we didn’t wake up early or go to Walmart or the mall.
Instead, I deemed the day after Thanksgiving, Book Friday, and we hit all the bookstores in our area.
This has been our post-Thanksgiving tradition since 2018. On Black Friday, we celebrate Book Friday. We make a coffee stop and hit the bookstores in our area. Local, regional chain, national chain: we’ll hit as many as we can.
I am surprisingly generous on Book Friday, as long as it’s books. Bookstores offer many things that are not books: games, toys, figurines, stuffed animals, blankets, tote bags. I sometimes have to remind them that we came to purchase things we can read over the break while we drink tea and eat cookies. If they find something other than books that they like, they can use their own money for that or contact “Team Santa”.
We’re not extreme shoppers. I’m usually the one who brings home the most. Hubs is in book over-buyers recovery and has sworn not to purchase any more books until he reads the ones on his shelf. The kids usually pick out one a piece. I always walk out with five. But when it’s done, we go home, set up in our alone zones, and revel in our bounty.
Read Books. Wear Boots.
XOXO,
B.
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