By Michael F. Duggan
Have you noticed the proliferation of horribly contrived commerce-related sales and spending days after Thanksgiving in recent years?
Years ago people noticed the panicked rush of millions of Americans to stores the day after Thanksgiving. This phenomenon was the result of day-after-Thanksgiving Day sales—i.e. marketing—that fact that many people are off from work on the day after the holiday, and the unsettling reality that Christmas is only four weeks away. It may have also may have been the unintended result and unforeseen side effect of the massive amounts of tryptophan ingested the day before. A kind of temporary insanity triggered by a turkey hangover.
On “Back Friday,” Americans were entertained with news stories showing crazed citizens storming into stores when they opened in the early morning darkness, trampling the weak or slow before them. We were treated to the rare spectacle of women punching or tackling each other in order to obtain the last mass-produced item of a particularly trendy kind in the store. Ah, manipulation and conformity.
With the rise of the Internet and online shopping, the Monday after Thanksgiving became “Cyber Monday.” Whether this was a complete gimmick or “a real thing”—a naturalistic trend—is unclear, but the term was supposedly devised by the National Retail Federation in 2005.
Following in suit, we saw the creation of Small Business Saturday in 2010, the brainchild of Jessica Ling, a corporate type at American Express. Although I like and support small and medium-sized businesses and companies—and believe that an economy based on them would be far superior to one of monster banks and mega corporations—the completely contrived nature of this “day,” and the blind obedience of people to embrace it, rubs me the wrong way.
Given all of this Holiday manipulation and spending going on, it is only natural that charities would want to get in on the action. In 2012, the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and the United Nations Foundation, declared the arrival of “GivingTuesday” (the day after “Cyber Monday,” although not limited to one day). If all this hype is going to happen anyway, I am not cynical about charities wanting to cash in on the hysteria.
All the same, please be sure to take off hump day this week in celebration of “A Fool and His Money Wednesday,” in anticipation of the day in January when your credit card bill arrives.