Since I was little, I’ve always heard the term “Black Friday,” but I was too young to understand exactly what it meant– I just knew stores had huge sales. My family never cared much about the deals, but my cousins were obsessed.
At the kids’ table during Thanksgiving, my older cousins would always talk about getting up early and camping out to buy the newest Xbox. The only thing I thought of was Why would you want to wait outside in the freezing cold for hours? It genuinely sounded like the worst thing ever.
My aunt Cathleen was the one family member known for going out on Black Friday and hunting for the best deals. In recent years, though, she hasn’t made it a priority since so many sales have moved online. She usually goes out only if there’s a discount of 50% or more.
“A lot of my shopping is done online now. I look for Cyber Monday sales but don’t make it a point to purchase anything on that day,” Cathleen said.
The prime days of Black Friday were from 2005-2015. You had to prepare to shop then. The ads came in the newspaper, and you had to sift through the papers on Thanksgiving morning to see what stores you were interested in.
Then, you made your list of where you wanted to go, taking into account what time the stores opened. Some were open all night, some opened at 5:00 a.m., others at 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. The fear was that things would sell out, so you wanted to be strategic in where you went first.
The most she had spent in a store was about $400, mostly on clothes. One year, Cathleen’s daughter–my cousin–Mary Kate joined her, which she found very fun. One of the stores they went to was JOANN’S, where she bought a wheeled case for a sewing machine; she still uses it and thinks about how early she woke up to buy it.
The earliest she had woken up was 5:00 a.m., aiming to be at the store by 6:00 a.m. She never camped out before, but remembered passing other stores like Target and seeing the huge line curled around the building.
As Black Friday becomes more digital every year, people like Cathleen still enjoy the thrill of chasing the best deals, holding on to a tradition that once defined the holiday weekend. I think we should be going out to shop, especially to get away from the screens. Nowadays, everything is online, and I think it is so fun to go and shop. I love the feeling of carrying around bags and not having to wait for shipping to wear a new outfit.
