Call me Grumpypants.
I’m annoyed this week. Lots of things annoyed me this week. Here’s just one.
Black Friday
Did you know that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now international holidays? I wrote last year about Israeli ads touting sales for Black Friday. This year, I saw that there were Black Friday sales in Germany and Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales on my Korean beauty products websites.
Not an endorsement, just a good image of Black Friday in Hebrew
Cyber Monday sale is still on!
Now to be fair, Israel, Germany, and Korea don’t celebrate in the traditional way by rolling out of bed at 3am to beat down the doors of stores in order to buy the latest, most popular doohickey. Moreover, they don’t even have the preliminary turkey feast to prepare for the onslaught. It’s just a regular Friday and Monday (sales extended through the week!) to sell stuff.
2 images I found on the internet, above Germany and below from India
What I wish had been exported from the US was the idea that there is a holiday to celebrate gratitude. But unfortunately, that idea exists in a fantasy world with unicorns and Care Bears.
In the real world, Thanksgiving – also known as Turkey Day – is squeezed in between the sugar-fueled, scary/sexy cosplay festival of begging your neighbors for handouts and the colorful, tree-killing, shopping extravaganza pushing everyone deeper into debt and destroying any chance of clutter-clearing.
Image from my personal copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags! …
Maybe Christmas … doesn’t come from a store.
I’m glad Dr. Seuss isn’t around to see this. He would be so disappointed in us.
Or the video, if you prefer.
The Write Place (for me) 
Ug, I was surprised to see how pervasive Black Friday had become in the internal stage, too. Now, if Small Business Saturday became a thing internationally, I wouldn’t be annoyed at that.
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I would 100% support Small Business Saturday!
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It’s all commercial to empty the shelves before marketing for xmas.
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That doesn’t quite explain why Israel has Black Friday…
The main issues for me is that Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving – the first official shopping day for Christmas – and it got it’s name because people were injured or killed trying to get into stores. So the international market matches it’s sales pitches to the 4th Friday in November based on a holiday they don’t celebrate to market for a holiday that in Israel is not holiday, that in Germany is not so commercial (I think) and where they could base sales on Advent, which is more of a thing there, and that in South Korea, which has Christmas as a holiday, is only starting to get into exchanging gifts (they used to give money and still do). So why Black Friday and Cyber Monday? There’s no cultural sense behind it. It’s just importing bad Americana with the negative overtone of “shop until you get injured or die.”
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