If I ruled the world, I would abolish Black Friday. I would also pull a Cindy Lou Who by mandating that the entire world hold hands around a giant Christmas tree, singing nonsensical Seussical carols.
I have never gone shopping on Black Friday. And it is all because of one thing: the crowd. Since my days as a ticket taker for a movie theater, I have despised crowds. Greed and selfishness run rampant like children amped up on energy drinks and super-soldier serums when people get in crowds. I still shudder when I remember the long nights behind the podium with the masses of customers standing before me like a flood of agitated water, and I was the scrawny levy with popcorn butter on my clothes. I still have nightmares of “The Dark Knight” midnight premiere.
Everyone knows the Black Friday horror stories of the woman using pepper spray to cut in line, the soccer moms trampled between the automatic doors and the grandmothers going WWE on each other for Tickle-Me-Elmo. And we’ve been hearing those same stories every year for the last decade.
And then this year the retail and gadget stores decided to extend Black Friday into Thursday, meaning the shopping madness was able to seep into Thanksgiving, usually a day of unadulterated relaxation and stomach-stuffing. Now we can break out the pepper spray a whole day early and have the soccer moms trampled just following the pumpkin pie.
I apologize if I sound overly cynical about this favorite family tradition, but it just seems like too much stress following such a nice, peaceful day. I definitely know most crowds are pretty mild, though testy and quick-footed, and it certainly gives our down-on-its-luck economy a day off from the dark news reports.
We have all had the sermons and movie themes and sappy songs on staying more focused on the giving rather than the receiving aspects of Christmas drilled into our heads every year since the time we were old enough to wear footy pajamas, so I’m not going to talk about it. Instead, I’m going to give another hint of advice: Slow down. I know for many the holiday season is shop-till-you-drop season and they feed off the jam-packed shopping malls and the discount gaming devices, but just think how much stress it all causes.
You have to wait in line for hours and it’s not like a midnight movie premiere for which you have pre-ordered the 70 percent-off cashmere Snuggie from Coco Chanel. You have to race into the store, hoping the hundreds of impatient mothers in front of you don’t get to them all first, and then you have stand in line for an hour to buy everything. And you could be sleeping off the turkey in a warm bed. And let’s face it, we’re all pretty much stressed-out college students. The last thing we need is more stress.
So instead, when you go shopping, take a breath and relax. Do not worry if you’re the first in line or have the most powerful can of pepper spray. If you do not get the gift of your mother’s dreams, do not fret. Instead, get creative and find something she’ll never expect. Do not let the stress of the holiday-shopping havoc keep you from a fully satisfying Christmas break.
