Rethink Your Black Friday Tradition This Year
There are other reasons to be thankful during the holidays.
Black Friday kickstarts the peak of the holiday shopping season. With Christmas around the corner, excitement and tensions start to rise as we use this time to prepare for the holiday ahead.
While Christmas may not be everyone’s favorite, it is the most anticipated holiday of the year. Before Halloween has even happened, you can already feel the Christmas spirit looming in the air. A lot of energy goes into getting the perfect gifts, hosting the best parties, and having the brightest decorations.
But somewhere along the way, the intention of Christmas has taken a backseat to the gift-giving component of the holiday. This inevitably makes Christmas the most expensive holiday to celebrate, creating pressure to get perfect gifts for all of our loved ones. This unfortunately comes with feelings of obligation and temptation to spend money we can’t spare on gifts for ourselves and others.
While this doesn’t have to be a bad thing since gift-giving is a part of Christmas, it’s led us to forget what Christmas is really about. It’s time to spread love and kindness.
If we can revert to times when material gifts weren’t expected, we can teach younger generations to value non-material things as well. Giving gifts doesn’t have to run your bank account dry.
But with Black Friday becoming a bigger event as each year passes, it has become more harmful than beneficial.
It Has Escalated Over the Years
People push their way into stores, sometimes trampling or shoving into others, in pursuit of things that are not a priority over someone’s life and safety. Stores are left a mess for retail workers who work hard to give everyone a pleasant shopping experience. Items are left broken, people are impatient in lines, and sometimes emotions are taken out on employees who are trying to do their best. Yet, this behavior is glossed over every year.
There is no other time of year that brings out this type of energy other than the holiday shopping season. We must question if Black Friday has gone too far if these types of situations tend to occur. If we start to value sales and things over people, haven’t we veered too far from our priorities? Do we feel such overwhelming stress during the holidays that we forget to be considerate of others? Can we change our approach to holiday giving this year?
I remember years ago when Black Friday only happened for one day and that was Friday itself. Before you knew it, it crept its way into Thanksgiving day with sales starting as early as 6 pm.
Nowadays, sales seem to span the whole of November and December, only giving people a bigger time frame to spend more money. The line between Thanksgiving and Black Friday has officially blurred together. With sales no longer confined to one day, it takes away the relaxation aspect of the season.
Reflect on What’s Important
Thanksgiving is a day where we celebrate what we are grateful for. There’s something special about taking the time to reflect on why we are thankful for the life we have and the people in it.
Unfortunately, Black Friday takes the spotlight away from this and encourages us to go on a shopping splurge on this same day, contradicting the purpose of Thanksgiving.
Is it the designer handbag or expensive car we have that we end up being thankful for? Or are we grateful for the non-material aspects of our lives? Looking back on my life, I’m thankful for the relationships I have with the people I love, not the material things they have given me.
I also used to fall into the Black Friday trap thinking that I was saving money on things I would’ve bought throughout the year anyway. But was I actually saving money or just buying things I didn’t need?
Dealing with traffic, trying to find parking, pushing through crowds, waiting in lines, and shopping while half-awake all at 2 am? Is it worth it?
Sales Pinpoint Our Desires
There’s a reason why Black Friday sales start earlier than the year before. Gone are the days that you splurged on purchases for only one day of the year. It didn’t take long until companies realized that the longer their sales lasted, the bigger the profit. The commercials that play on TV have a way of convincing you that expensive gifts show someone that you love them.
While Black Friday might look a little different this year with pandemic restrictions (hopefully reducing the number of in-person shoppers), this will only increase the number of people shopping online.
When shopping online, it’s easy to ignore the number of things you’ve added to your cart. What starts as a sweater for your nephew and a shirt for yourself can turn into 10 items than 20 items. Before you know it you spent all the money you’ve saved throughout the year without realizing it.
We don’t have to be the victim of this marketing ploy. This year we can look for an alternative way to celebrate that doesn't cause us unnecessary stress.
The Problem With Black Friday
So why is Black Friday such a problem?
It causes us to buy things that we don’t need simply because it’s on sale. It’s a lot like how coupons work. You may not have bought anything from that store if you didn’t have a coupon, but because you had one it convinced you to buy something. It gives you the false impression that you saved money, while in reality, you spent money that you weren’t going to spend in the first place. It makes it hard to resist so we end up buying more than we first intended.
While I understand the attraction of a sale, it causes you to buy items you don’t 100% love just because it's half off.
These sales also create an urgency to get a gift for everyone you know — convincing us that the only way to show our love for someone during the holidays is to buy them expensive gifts. Before you know it, you find yourself spending money you don’t have because you feel a sense of guilt when you see that it’s what everyone else is doing.
I get it. Buying gifts for someone is what we’ve been told to do to show someone we love them.
But maybe this year we can try a different approach like cooking them their favorite meal or dessert or doing something they’ve been wanting to do for a while now (if pandemic restrictions allow it). We can show that someone means a lot to us by giving them something more meaningful.
Let’s Transition to Better Values
Reassess what’s important this holiday season. There’s a reason this time of year brings us more stress than relaxation.
Stress and doing things out of obligation shouldn’t be a yearly occurrence that we accept as normal — because we all deserve a proper break at the end of the year rather than spending all of our time worrying about things that shouldn’t matter. This time around, rethink your priorities. Do what’s healthy for you — physically, mentally, and financially.
Let’s stop buying things for the sake of buying things. I hope this year we can take a breath and enjoy the day in front of us, not spend money we don’t have just because it’s expected of us.
Black Friday and Christmas gifts don’t need to be the focus of the holiday season. Let’s find our way back to what truly matters.
