Black Friday
Dr. Michael L. Ford
26 November 2005
	If I understand the concept of Black Friday
correctly, the Friday following Thanksgiving is the
day retailers expect their business operations to move
from the red into the black for the year. Not only
that, this is the day consumers hit the stores
expecting to get tremendous savings by shopping these
retailers who are expecting to make their years’
profit. Is it just me, or is there some contradiction
in the concept of tremendous savings for consumers and
tremendous profits for retailers at the same time?
	For Black Friday many people arrive the day before,
getting in cold lines outside stores, waiting for
store doors to open. Then they charge like some mad
mob into the stores. This year there was video footage
of people being knocked down and walked over by
shoppers in their eagerness to give retailers their
money. In previous years women were photographed in
tug of war over garments at a sales table. After they
got through fighting over the garment I do not believe
I would have wanted it.
	Two of my wife’s sisters do something I have been
told a number of people practice. They either travel
to where a lot of outlet stores are located or they go
to Atlanta, staying overnight in a motel with their
husbands. Somehow it is difficult for me to imagine
how they are going to save enough shopping to pay the
expenses of the trip. There must be some other benefit
than saving money.
	So we celebrate a day of thanks, followed with a day
of materialism, before we begin the season observing
the advent of God with us. The more I think about it,
the less Black Friday seems to fit into what I want on
my mind this time of year. Of all the days of the year
this is the one day I do not want to go to any store.
For all that I will spend on any future Black Friday,
the stores can stay in the red and my checkbook in the
black.
	Christians involved in pushing, tugging, and snarling
at one another for a few percent discount on
overpriced items just does not seem to me Christ
honoring activity. I fail to see the joy in shoving
myself into a store full of struggling people to
finally arrive before a sales clerk who cannot smile
and say Merry Christmas. Black Friday may really be
named for its mood..