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Five Ways to Make Your Black Friday More Mindful
Savor pleasure wherever it arises
Our brains are wired for pleasure, and we can find it in many different pursuits and at many different levels.
Shopping offers plenty of opportunities for savoring: from your mochaccino pit stop to the sense of satisfaction you feel when you’ve crossed something off your gift list.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Why Black Friday Is So Popular
Black Friday is the conventional starting day for the holiday shopping season.
Historically, it’s also been the best day to find great deals on the year’s hottest toys, gam...
The 20th Century: The Parade of Sponsors
- In the middle of the 20th century, Thanksgiving parades drew crowds in most major cities and in some of the smaller towns too. Many were sponsored by local or national retailers. Back in the day, that meant mostly department stores.
- By attaching their names to the most visible events on the preholiday calendar, department stores reminded their customers that they were open for business in the coming holiday shopping season.
- Over time, Thanksgiving parades came to mark the unofficial start of that season.
The Modern Holiday Shopping Calendar
- Thanksgiving fell on the last Thursday of November since 1863 until 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November (starting with 1941), influenced by the request of a powerful coalition of retailers.
- When Thanksgiving fell on November 30, it left only 24 holiday shopping days and this worried retailers who reasoned that busy holiday shoppers would simply shop less in a shorter season.
- They promoted the idea that a longer holiday shopping season would be good for the American economy.
Black Friday has two relevant meanings
- In history, Black Friday was a stock market disaster that happened on September 24, 1869, when, after a period of uncontrolled speculation, the price of gold crashed, and th...
Black Friday and retail spending
- Retailers may spend an entire year planning their Black Friday sales. They use this event as their chance to offer special prices on overstock inventory and discounts on seasonal items, such as typical holiday gifts.
- Retailers also offer significant discounts on top-selling brands of TVs, smart devices, and other electronics, tempting customers in the hope that, once inside, they will purchase higher-margin goods.
- Consumers often shop on Black Friday for the hottest trending items, which can lead to stampedes and violence in the absence of adequate security.
"In the Black"
There is a theory stating that, when it comes to "Black Friday", the term "black" refers to being profitable, which comes from the old bookkeeping practice of recording profits in black ink and losses in red ink.
Retail businesses should be able to sell enough on this Friday (and the ensuing weekend) to put themselves "in the black” for the rest of the year.
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Remember what’s essential about holidays
Start to let go of the non-essential
Let’s let go of the myth that you have to spend to give:
- Gift your family with some small experiences, such as caroling, baking, watching It’s a Wonderful Life;
- Volunteer as a family at a homeless shelter.
- Make meaningful gifts. A video of memories. A scrapbook.
- Bake gifts.
- Have an experience instead of giving material goods: do something fun together, go to the beach or a lake.
- Give the gift of your expertise. Are you good at fixing cars? Teaching music? Teaching cooking? Magic tricks? Help or teach someone something you’re good at.