"Are you going to catch any Black Friday sales?"

Resist the urge to add "hell." Resist the urge to add "hell."

"No."

The Friday after Thanksgiving is said to be the biggest shopping day of the holiday season.  It is said that this day marks when some business stop operating “in the red,” thus the moniker “Black” Friday.

While it used to begin early Friday morning, in recent years, greed, commercialism, and the need to give the earliest best deal to make shopping in stores more enticing than shopping online has caused many stores to open early Thanksgiving evening.

Admittedly, I attempted to take part in the melee once, just for the experience.  I quickly discovered it was an experience I could do without.

  1. I waited until around 3am to come out.  The store I chose to shop was Walmart.  When I had to park in the lot of a nearby business rather than Walmart itself, I knew it was going to be bad.
  2. When I got to the door and saw the crowd, I just turned around. I’m a pretty patient person… but not THAT patient. I couldn’t see any deal being worth the attitude I would have had trying to navigate the crowd.

This was long before I became a mom.  Once that happened, I KNEW I’d never try Black Friday shopping in a store ever again. Here’s why:

I’ve always valued family time, and it has become even more important to me.  I don’t want to cut that time and enjoyment short to shop and make myself upset.

While I’ve mentioned my patience being great but not great enough, I’m not sure how I’d handle somebody fighting me for an item.  I know that no item is worth fighting over, but the disrespect just might be.  Don’t judge me.

Violence while shopping is at an all-time high during Black Friday. I don’t want an accidental swing or bullet to hit me.  Neither do I want to be trampled trying to get into or out of a store.

I am becoming more and more disenchanted with the commercialism of holidays. Moments and experiences are more important to me than “things.”

Last but certainly not least, I have more than enough items that fall into the category of “Things I Don’t Need and Can’t Even Store Properly, but I Got Them on a Great Sale.”

I’m not knocking anybody who DOES get into Black Friday. By all means, if that’s your thing, do you.  But I’d much rather spend my day off napping intermittently while watching movies, drinking hot chocolate, and deleting holiday text messages.

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