You know, The Day After Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year.
Well, actually, let’s be honest… it’s the fattest shopping day of the year. But people just like to be polite and say, “big.”
(sigh) You know, it’s fine for people to be polite, but I just worry no one’s telling The Day After Thanksgiving the truth, and we’re all going to wake up one day, and The Day After Thanksgiving will be dead of a heart attack, and we’ll just have this big hole in the calendar, and no clear beginning to the Christmas retail season, and we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
The scary thing is, The Day After Thanksgiving has been fat its whole life, which makes its risk of heart disease astronomical. It was always a chubby kid and always self-conscious about its weight. Then, the cycle began: it was sad because it was fat, and it ate when it was sad. The Day After Thanksgiving’s mom recognized there was a problem; she always encouraged the kid to play soccer, but all it wanted to do was sit on its duff, play video games, and serve as a major American economic indicator.
So, it’s the fattest shopping day of the year in a couple days, and it’s only getting fatter. Which is not to say there aren’t other shopping days with real body issues, too. I mean, The Saturday Before Christmas can’t fit into its tux from college either. But at least The Saturday Before Christmas is aware of its weight; it’s taking a Pilates class; it’s making an effort. The Day After Thanksgiving just wears black a lot, trying to hid its figure, never facing the facts. That’s where it gets that nickname, “Black Friday.” Yeah, more like, “Deluded Friday,” if you ask me. Or “Kidding Itself Friday.” Or “On It’s Way To An Early Grave If It Doesn’t Watch Out Friday!” I’m sorry, I should stop with that. It just breaks my heart to see a shopping day I love so much… be like this.
Anyway, go out and gather ye bargains while ye may, I suppose. Enjoy The Day After Thanksgiving. Buy, buy, buy. Shop, shop, shop. Consume, consume, consume.
But on the way out of the mall, when you’re carrying all your packages to your car, ready to head back to your suburban picket-fenced home, tired from a long day of spending, and The Day After Thanksgiving asks if it could have a dollar or two to go get a Cinnabon or a big cookie or a footlong from Nathan’s with chili and cheese… show some restraint. Say no. And buy it a chicken caeser salad instead.
The Day After Thanksgiving may pout, it may whine, but in the long run, it’ll thank you. Because The Day After Thanksgiving is the most massive annual infusion of money into the American economy, but that doesn’t mean it has to look like it.