When I was young, my dad always told me that you were not allowed to play Christmas music before the Friday after Thanksgiving. He did make it clear that it was an unwritten rule, not carved in stone, but one that he would not break, nonetheless. I thought that the rule was reasonable, and made sense. In more recent years, however, it seems as though that rule is being broken earlier, and earlier. If my memory isn't failing me, I believe that one local shopping center started playing Christmas music, immediately after Halloween, this year. So much for unwritten rules.
Do these business owners and decision makers really believe that people will spend more money if they start hearing Christmas music a month earlier than normal? If that is the case, why not just play it all year? Heck, they should have started blasting it 24/7 over every radio station and public address system in the country, two summers ago, when the economy crashed. Maybe that would have helped!
I am also intrigued by the name that has been given to today: Black Friday. I think that it is appropriately named, since I am not a fan of the crass commercialism and consumption that this day has come to represent. Wall Street seems to have co-opted everything, and yet despite that, surprisingly, they haven't been able to re-brand the name Black Friday into something less ominous sounding. Something like Friendly Friday, or Fantastic Friday, or Frolicking Friday. Perhaps I shouldn't have written that, because now they're likely to attempt to try.
It is my belief that there is little that you can do to cause people to spend more money around the holidays. They either have it, or they don't, and this season, I expect that they don't.
At the end of the day, perhaps this is a good thing. Just like I have had to learn to live with less due to my unemployment, perhaps not having as much money will teach people that the holidays are not about belongings, but are instead about belonging.
* Note to all business owners and decision makers: Playing Christmas music ridiculously early causes me, and people like me, NOT to shop at your businesses.
Do these business owners and decision makers really believe that people will spend more money if they start hearing Christmas music a month earlier than normal? If that is the case, why not just play it all year? Heck, they should have started blasting it 24/7 over every radio station and public address system in the country, two summers ago, when the economy crashed. Maybe that would have helped!
I am also intrigued by the name that has been given to today: Black Friday. I think that it is appropriately named, since I am not a fan of the crass commercialism and consumption that this day has come to represent. Wall Street seems to have co-opted everything, and yet despite that, surprisingly, they haven't been able to re-brand the name Black Friday into something less ominous sounding. Something like Friendly Friday, or Fantastic Friday, or Frolicking Friday. Perhaps I shouldn't have written that, because now they're likely to attempt to try.
It is my belief that there is little that you can do to cause people to spend more money around the holidays. They either have it, or they don't, and this season, I expect that they don't.
At the end of the day, perhaps this is a good thing. Just like I have had to learn to live with less due to my unemployment, perhaps not having as much money will teach people that the holidays are not about belongings, but are instead about belonging.
* Note to all business owners and decision makers: Playing Christmas music ridiculously early causes me, and people like me, NOT to shop at your businesses.
I think I told you it started in several stores here too the day after Halloween. I actually went into the grocery store on November 1st expecting to get crazy Halloween candy deals. Not this year. Every trace of Samhain had been obliterated over night. The orange and black replaced with red and green; the garland, tinsel and blinky lights hung. Annoyingly pleasant X-Mas Muzak wafting through the air.
BTW: Some retailers have tried to soften the Black Friday image by co-opting breast cancer. It's good that some money normally spent on Black Friday gets donated to breast cancer research but I can't help but see this as crass opportunism.
So now it's Pink Friday? Pastels are for Easter, not the Friday after Thanksgiving.
What sort of Halloween bargains were you looking for? Orange napkins with black cats on them? :-)