Tags
Black Friday, Christmas, consumer, Cyber Monday, gifts, greed, Holiday sales, mob, shopping
Is anyone else bothered by the final Black Friday weekend statistics? I am appalled. Despite ongoing protests by the 99% movement; despite canned encouragements to “Think Differently” and “Shop Locally” that have recently flown around Facebook; despite high unemployment, high homeowner foreclosure rates, stagnant wages, cuts to education, social welfare nets, and healthcare; despite all the doom and gloom, Shopper Trak reports that sales on Friday, November 25, were up 6.6 percent. Sales continued to climb throughout the long weekend, adding up to a 39 percent increase for the entire weekend. And it’s not over yet. Today, known in the online sales world as Cyber Monday, sales are expected to increase two million above last year’s one BILLION dollar sales.
edelmandigital.com
SDS ponders the perils mob behavior in her recent post about the 99% movement. There is no greater or more reckless mob than that comprised of shoppers who interrupt Thanksgiving Day to queue up like cattle in a slaughterhouse maze, crashing their way into retail stores the moment the door opens. People have actually been killed in the stampede, for God’s sake. This year a Los Angeles Walmart shopper was arrested for pepper-spraying fellow shoppers at a rack of electronic games. Perhaps the woman’s brilliant ploy was sparked by watching TV footage showing security guards pepper-spraying OWS protesters on the campus of US Davis.
Even more shocking is the report I heard on CNN last night that a majority of holiday shoppers interviewed this weekend were shopping not for Christmas gifts, but for themselves. Retailers and manufacturers are gloating over the uptick in sales. This is just what the economy needs: strong holiday sales that will prompt manufacturers to grease the wheels of production. Grow the economy! Yea. Use more resources, more energy; produce more stuff so that your used stuff can end up in the landfill.
Come on people. Do we really NEED all this stuff? Can’t we all just get along with what we have? How about mending, altering, patching, repairing? Let’s put the money we save into helping each other survive. We’re going to weigh down this poor planet and knock it off its orbit with the weight of our stuff.
globe-modis
Rangewriter 
Yet another thought-provoking and well-put post. A good friend of mine in the US (she also happens to be lesbian and an occupier in her city) has been celebrating the Friday after Thanksgiving as ‘Happy Buy Nothing Day’ where they live off leftovers and the family gets together in the park for some free play and laughter together. I love this attitude. All those maniacs that run into the shops as soon as they have given their due thanks (or not) are nothing but hippocrites!
I personally could never understand why certain days are such ‘shopping days’. Here in the UK, it is usually Boxing Day that has everyone and their mother on the streets, usually to swap or return unwanted Christmas gifts! In my family, we have for years given Christmas gifts only to the Children. Other than that we bake diet cookies for for my diabetic grandparents and make photo calendars of our little ones for the grandparents and greatgrandparents who live too far away to visit regularly. I am looking forward to my little one being old enough to craft his own little gifts. Christmas gifts that are thoughtful and made personally for an idividual will always be appreciated and never be returned.
Thank you for this rant, it needed to be said!
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Sandra, ah Boxing Day. I’ve heard of it. And, actually, we don’t call it that, but the same madness occurs here on the 26th. Even if that is a Sunday…people rush off to trade in their gifts for what they REALLY want which is now on sale for half price. Ugh. It all makes me tired.
I love your family tradition of gifts for kids only…and the thoughtful things that you do for the elders. This is the way it should be. Christmas is for kids.
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We consumers have been ‘mesmerized’ into doing what we are told to do by these large corporations.
I agree that the greed of the 1% has to be ‘corralled’ and we too have to wake up and save this planet for the next generation and beyond.
I stopped the frantic gift search a few years ago when I realized OMG what am I doing?!
Now I donate a sum of money to a local needy shelter for homeless men and tell family and friends that this is what I did on their behalf or on their name. It works well and I stay calm…..and a few are given shelter in the process.
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Jim, I like your approach to gift giving. I have adopted a similar scheme for the people I care deeply about who live across the pond from me. My German relatives are always very generous to me. They know my weaknesses and cater to those. But the cost of postage alone makes transatlantic giving extraordinarily complicated. In the last few years, I have researched to find the best international aide programs. I contribute to the ones I hope would be most meaningful to my specific family members. I hope they understand my departure from tradition.
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Did you see this article on MSN today? http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/28/9069519-waiting-for-midnight-hungry-families-on-food-stamps-give-walmart-enormous-spike
I agree that the consumer-crazed shopping spree is sickening, but this article made me think a little differently about midnight-shopping crazies. Perhaps people line up and behave badly because this is the only day of the year they can afford certain items that others take for granted. I was browsing some Black Friday ads, and a lot of the products on sale at stores like Walmart and Target were things like electric toothbrushes, coats and diapers – not exactly luxury items. Maybe that 39% increase in sales over the weekend were out of luck families taking advantage of once a year sales to stock up on necessities. I too see the stories of trashy looking people pepper spraying fellow shoppers for an Xbox. I think those are probably the crazy people we all wish would simplify and wise up. But that may not be the only side of the Black Friday story.
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Thanks for the link, MJ. I hadn’t seen it. You raise a valid point about people being able to hope for a few items that would normally fall outside the parameters of their budget.(Although I have trouble thinking of things like an electric toothbrush as a necessity) I suspect that you are right about some of the 39% increase in sales being attributed to out of luck families. But I think far more people are shopping for luxuries or to fullfill giving expectations. Many are using credit which they will spend the next 24 months trying to pay off. I doubt many people were stocking up on food, since Black Friday is a week before food stamp payday.
I think the msnbc piece actually touched on a slightly different issue. Our social safety net is stretched too thin and families are coming desperately close to falling through (those that haven’t already.) Too many people are unemployed, underemployed, and trapped by outrageous housing costs. Unemployment benefits are drying up while corporate CEO’s are still scooping up their million dollar benefits packages and Congress is busy spinning on its ass. Thank heavens the get-the-government-off-our-backs set hasn’t yet managed to derail the food stamp program. Interestingly, I worked with the mother of Ms. Reeder in the mscnbc story. A very hard working woman, indeed.
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It’s a mixed bag for me – I think MJ has a valid point about the less fortunate among us trying to stretch that dollar. And, there are others who probably found it the most convenient time to shop. But the hyping that the stores do is unnecessary and just fuels the frenzy. The big sales should go on all year long, not occurring on one or two days a year. If they have that much inventory, they can afford to have more sales. Then there’s the whole consumer fueling the economy thing – I’m ambivalent. People are working to make stuff – people buy the stuff – people have jobs because of it. However, and this is a big “however,” so much of what I see in stores is ALL MADE IN CHINA! We’re not making these products. We’re just importing them and hiring low paid sales clerks to sell them. We need a stronger manufacturing society here – stop allowing corporations to take their manufacturing overseas – or at least levy a huge fine or tax on them if they do.
We have an industry that we could excel in if only our current administration had the will to fight for it – a green industry. There have got to be thousands of green products that could be invented and sold.
Ok. Enough from me.
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So true, about the consumer-driven economy, SDS. We are in a cycle that requires us to buy more stuff. We almost feel like it’s a patriotic duty to buy more stuff…keep that economy flowing. (Echoes of GW?) What an EXCELLENT point you make about the made in china aspect.
There is the other mini-movement being promoted on FB and elsewhere…buy local. That is good…as far as it goes. I can buy cute little soaps and lotions and candles. But where am I going to find locally produced shoes, and electronic gadgets? Even if I go to the local jewelry store…those diamonds and baubles didn’t come from Idaho. (Except maybe the garnets, jade, or jasper…)
Another situation for which there are no simple answers. Sound bytes won’t fix these problems.
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I love the spunk of this line: We’re going to weigh down this poor planet and knock it off its orbit with the weight of our stuff.
What is the concept of Black Friday that it includes mobs and pepper-spraying sprees? Is it the only day in a year when there’s a huge sale?
I think consumerism is a naughty issue. It is a feeling that is fed into the human subconscious that we need to buy every kind of candy in the candy store. I am aware that when buyers shell money that generates business somewhere. For instance, when an electronics company’s product clicks in the market that inevitably means jobs for engineers (such as myself). However, I am also aware that with the way newer technologies are developed, there’s always going to be a “better” product somewhere down the line (like in a few months). My suggestion is this: know exactly what you need the thing for; if you can’t see a definite use for it, you probably don’t really need it. In my experience of moving around a lot, having too much stuff can be problematic.
On a different note, how was your Thanksgiving, RW?
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Ha, Nel! That’s the solution. Be a vagabond. It’s a lotta work to pack up all your stuff and move it to the next spot. Last time I did that, I was astonished by how much “stuff” I’d accumulated. And I try to be conscious consumer.
Yes…this issue of a consumer driven economy is fraught with all sorts of issues and dilemas, as we are seeing from the comments I’m getting. There is the expectation that if we work hard, we should be able to afford some nice things…some creature comforts. But this is a slippery slope because it is easy for those creature comforts to begin dictating where we work, how many hours we devote to work, and pretty soon…the creature comforts own us.
It is interesting to me to recognize that back in the 60’s my generation of “free love, be happy hippies” seemed to want to change the world. We talked about living off the land, some even tried that. We shunned baubles and baths and eschewed living simply. But those kids grew up to be parents and grandparents just like their parents and grandparents before them. Parents always want to provide more for their own kids. That must be part of some human survival instinct.
I wish we could come up with a different, less need-driven system. World economies are based upon growth. Growth, Growth, Growth….more consumers, more houses, more people, more cars, more gadgets. How do we get out of this cycle?
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“Free love, be happy” hippies – I might belong to this generation, unknowingly. *chuckles*
How do we get out of this cycle? – Thought-provoking. I’ll think about this; although I’m not sure if I can come with something realistic. It’s a sad state isn’t it? The fact that people are pepper-spraying other people to get a bargain on the Wii (it was a Wii she was after, right?)
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Yes, I can imagine you a 60’s chick, Nel! You have the spirit. Now, the trick is to hold fast to those convictions as life pulls you along in new directions. The world is in noticeably worse shape now than it was then, so the imperative is stronger. Keep thinking and writing.
I’m not sure what the pepper-spray-woman was consumed by…I just read that it was an ” electronic game.” Really it doesn’t matter what she was compelled to hoard…even it was a brick of half-price gold, her behavior was unacceptable.
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I’ve sent out my Christmas message – if there’s any gift giving to or from me, it is to be an article owned by the giver! Elst – give a hug!
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This is great, SD. I’d like to borrow your message and put it in a mocked up “Letter to Santa” to distribute to my friends and family.
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Actually, my last effort to alter the gift-giving cycle, about 40 years ago, resulted in a spat with my stepsister that has endured to this day. (Of course, there were other problems in that relationship, but I was shocked that my carefully thought out proposal was met with dripping sarcasm and disdain.)
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Aaah…’tis the time of year, isn’t it? That post I wrote about Best Buy’s mean-to-Santa commercial has just about knocked me over. I was just irritated by it and wanted to vent, but I’ve gotten a couple thousand hits on it and so many comments that I gave up even trying to reply to them. It seems a lot of people feel quite fierce about what the spirit of Christmas and giving is supposed to be about! We donate to local charities in the name of all our siblings every year, (a way to give that I learned from my mom) and I write a Thoughts From The Yuletide letter that I slip in with Christmas cards and emails every year, where I try to both entertain and affirm the best of what the season is about for us. I don’t know how many people actually read it, (most people roll their eyes at those typed holiday inserts but I just love them…goofy, I know.) The main thing is it makes me feel better writing it…puts me back in the right place in my head and my heart, and I enjoy the holidays more for it. I’m known as a fairly odd gift giver.
Did you see the 60 Minutes segment last week on the high numbers of children who are homeless right now? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK_RnxYdrqU It’s heartbreaking and I’m so glad they aired it right now, during this season of giving. If I’m starting to lose perspective of what’s really important, this kind of thing grounds me instantly. I was so inspired by the girl who wants to grow up and become a defense lawyer for children! If I had the money I’d set up the grant to pay for her schooling myself.
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I do a Christmas letter, too. I think there’s an art to a well done Christmas letter. I can understand why they’ve gotten a bad rap. Some people seem determined to document each and every accolade anyone in their family has even considered during the past 365 days. I like to hit a few high or low points and try to flesh out what they’ve meant to me. There are people with whom I’ve stayed in touch only through the exchange of those yearly holidaygrams.
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I wonder how many of those shoppers would flock to the stores if they weren’t told to by the repeated reminders that it’s Black Friday, or Presidents’ Day, or the fourth shopping day before Christmas. Beyond the mindless materialism is the equally sad fact that most people simply follow orders, no matter how senseless those orders may be. But have hope, Linda: it seems that more and more people are coming around to your view. It’ll just take time. This is a massive ship, and the turns are wide.
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Yes Charles, if we could just reprogram the messages that people blindly follow. You’re right, as always, Charles, to recognize that it’s a massive ship limited to only tiny corrections at a time. Thanks for swinging by Charles. I confess that your book showed up in the mail but I haven’t had an opportunity to do more than gaze at it. It’s a catchy cover, several guests have seen in and gazed at it with curiosity. Tee hee.
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Pingback: Christmases Away from Home: Pseudo Survival Guide | Directionally Impaired in Life's Infinite Possibilities
I’m not sure how I got this pingback so late. My post was ages ago and so was this post. But in any case, thanks for the shout out! I’m glad you’ve developed a good plan for holidays away from home. Many people never get the hang of it.
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