Opinion : Is it worth fighting for Black Friday deals?
Once upon a time shopping at Christmas was predicable and easy, goods would be sold in the shops up to Christmas when the January sales started.
Now it seems Christmas shopping has become complicated after Black Friday, an invention from the United States, entered the shopping calendar.
Traditionally the day following Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday of November, Black Friday is regarded as the day when the Christmas shopping season starts in the United States.
As far as my good self has seen from pictures on the TV Black Friday is no more than people squabbling over discounted goods, sometimes pushing others out of the way to acquire their purchases.
Black Friday is yet another import from across the pond with anti-social undertones like the dreadful trick-or-treat. Indeed since 2006, there have been 7 reported deaths and 98 injuries throughout the United States on Black Friday as shoppers clamber to get the bargains ahead of anyone else.
Personally yours truly prefers to obtain my Christmas purchases in a more tranquil and gentile manner.
This year several national shops, such as a large supermarket in the Cressex area of High Wycombe, have decided not to take part in Black Friday.
Other retailers have decided to ‘spin out’ their Black Friday offers over several weeks and to announce them in advance.
Most shops have ‘copped out’ and put the Black Friday offers on their website thus defusing the possibility of customers entering into physical contact in the scramble to get purchases.
What has the world come to when people are prepared to fight over purchases in shops and when retailers have to undertake sales on the internet rather than in the shops?
Black Friday, which dates back 15 years to the year 2000, is no more than a gimmick to get customers to purchase goods, it’s a sales tactic plain and simple.
The day of Black Friday with its ‘I got mine’ ethos symbolises everything that is wrong with Christmas, a festival which is supposed to celebrate the birth of Christ.
Profits for shopkeepers and cheap deals for customers who are loathed to spend money than necessary are more in-line with the ethos of Lucifer than that of Jesus.
Anyway, if you decide to enter into some Black Friday shopping madness then I wish you good luck, no doubt there are some excellent deals to be had however my good self has already purchased Christmas presents for my friends so one will not be partaking in acquiring Black Friday bargains this year.
What do you think?
*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.
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