Growing up in the 2000s and 2010s, the holiday season came imbued with a certain intangible magic. There was something in the air in the months of November and December that we’ve since lost, and I’m not just talking about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or mall Santas — I mean people tackling each other flying-squirrel style over $10 TVs.
Black Friday used to occupy a much more notable place in the cultural sphere. News channels sent their bravest reporters into the lion’s den to interview crazed shoppers; beauty gurus armed themselves with peppermint mochas and launched into the fray with vlogs and hauls edited and posted before noon. Today’s Black Friday consists of lackluster deals and a major shift to online shopping. What happened to this once-beloved consumerist holiday, and how can we restore it to its former glory?
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person shopping has seen a steady decline. Online shopping was the sensible, safe option during the pandemic, but its convenience stuck around long after stores reopened. Things have only gone downhill with the introduction of Cyber Monday, a shell of Black Friday solely dedicated to e-commerce. Furthermore, brands are less inclined to offer extreme deals like they used to. Barbara Kahn, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that “Black Friday used to be a trigger for people to go to the store, but as it’s morphed into a general promotional season; Black Friday itself lost its magic: its sense of urgency.” What was once a single day of nationwide chaos and insane deals has been diluted to dull discounts throughout a five-day period from the Friday after Thanksgiving to the following Monday.
So, why should we care?
Black Friday is more than just an excuse for consumerism; it’s a modern-day bacchanalia. You see two grown adults throwing hands over a TV set; I see the hunter-gatherers and gladiators of ages past. After sluggish Thanksgiving pleasantries of food and family time, Black Friday comes as a full 180-degree shift. It’s catharsis for dealing with your overbearing family members, a chance to force your lazy self out of the house. There’s something so deliciously adventurous and primal about waking up at 4 a.m. to beat the crowd, scouring for deals and straggling items, perhaps getting into a minor altercation on the way (disclaimer: I do not condone violence against your fellow shoppers, I simply find it entertaining in theory) and then collapsing in the comfort of your home to revel in the discounted glories you’ve collected.
Online shopping is less of a satisfying experience. Sure, it can be done from the comfort of your own home with holiday movies playing in the background, but that’s at the expense of eye strain, repetitive scrolling motions and the inability to fully interact with and evaluate the products you’re considering. The process of punching in credit card numbers and having to wait for the package to arrive sacrifices the instant gratification of the haul and the connection to the item itself — you didn’t rescue it from its shelf and cradle it to the checkout line, it was simply tossed into a box and shipped to you.
On a more serious note, there’s something to be said about the experience of being promised a certain idea of adulthood and subsequently being robbed by society of the chance to fulfil it. Generation Z grew up waiting for the day we’d finally get to have adult money to use like the adults we looked up to, only to never get that chance due to inflation and the elimination of experiences altogether. As a child, watching Black Friday hauls and news stories made me eager to participate once I was old enough. Sure, I can now go to the mall on Black Friday and shop, but between the declining sales and general cultural shift, it won’t be the same.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’ll never get to ride the high of buying a computer for the low, low price of $19.99 at the root of my concern for the country’s number one consumerist holiday. Nevertheless, while the industry-level issues aren’t in our control, we can still go out and celebrate Black Friday in an echo of the way it was originally intended. Get your favorite seasonal drink, grab your friends and get out to the mall — even if it’s just to window-shop with Christmas music in the background.