Pen-Elayne on the Web

I'm Not Buying It

So the local news channel, she says, "Shoppers Welcome 'Black Friday'." And I'm thinking, wait a minute. This website about days says "'Black Friday' has been regularly used to label days of significance within the British culture. This was the name given to December 6 1745 in the British Isles. This was the day that information reached London (UK) that the Young Pretender had reached Derby (UK). The threatened General Strike was cancelled on 15 April 1921 affecting the stance of the British Labour Movement (UK). The Government (USA) flooded the open market with gold to bring down prices on 24 September 1869 ruining the livelihoods of many speculators in USA...Friday is believed to be a day of misfortune too for Buddhists and Brahmins." And wasn't Black Friday known to many as Valentine's Day? Or that horrid quake in India last year? Or a Steely Dan song? Or a Boris Karloff movie? Or a synonym for Friday the 13th? Help me, Dictionary.com! Ah, here it is: "Attended with disaster; calamitous: a black day; the stock market crash on Black Friday." Well, what about HyperDictionary.com? Says there as well, '(of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin; 'the stock market crashed on Black Friday...'" Most interestingly to me at least, according to this website, in the '80s "when squatters in the south German city of Freiburg were mass arrested, rallies and demonstrations supporting them and condemning the police state's eviction policy took place in every major city in Germany. In Berlin on that day, later dubbed 'Black Friday,' upwards of 15,000 to 20,000 people took to the streets and destroyed an upper class shopping area."

But no, this article insists that "The day after Thanksgiving, commonly called 'Black Friday,' is among the busiest shopping days of the year." Commonly called? Just which commoners are we talking about here? Could it possibly be those oh-so-common folk at the National Retail Federation, graciously making their spokespeople available throughout this weekend to spread the doctrine of the new meaning of Black Friday (which, internally, means the day retailers tally up their accounts to see if they've made it into the black for the year - thank you BBC!)?

Okay, a lot of good people work in retail, and far be it for me to castigate something that tries to put a positive spin on a phrase that's had a negative meaning for hundreds of years, but I'm sorry. This isn't Pollyanna, it's business looking out for business, and I don't buy it. In fact, if enough of us adhere to the idea of Buy Nothing Day, perhaps Black Friday will again be relegated to the honored position it's enjoyed lo these many centuries - as a harbinger of doom.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend. I'm off to have my dinner of bubble & squeak now.