By KEN KLINGENMEIER
Well, the season for giving is nearly upon us. The companies that sell things are telling us so – some of them have been telling us so since August and September. It’s been like this for quite a while now. The rush to sell things precedes the rush to buy things by several weeks or months.
Black Friday is today – and yesterday, and tomorrow, and a week from today. This seems new. I don’t recall it being Black Friday every day in the recent past. Of course, it used to be that Black Friday was that magic shopping day on the day after Thanksgiving. Troops of visiting relatives would join their in-town relatives for planned operations of buying. The newspaper was FULL of ads for stores that opened at dawn with outrageous prices on everything from televisions and computers to jewelry and unmentionables.
On Friday morning, after a cup of coffee and a sweet roll, the armies would descend and stand in line to wait for the doors to open – often behind the people who had spent the night in tents to be in the front of that line to wait for the doors to open. Then the doors would open and the real challenge began. Sometimes – well, often – it was mayhem! There were fights. There were squabbles.
To alleviate this problem, some stores opened on Thanksgiving evening and sometimes remained open all night. Still, there weren’t enough cheap TVs and jewelry to go around. Then – Amazon!
Suddenly you could take your chances on the stupendously low-priced dream gifts by going online and clicking away. Everything would arrive at your door by carrier – FedEx, UPS, and USPS all have a piece of the pie. People get what they want to give and, more importantly, get what they want for themselves at bargain prices.
Believe me, I understand. The holiday giving season is very important to merchants – to anyone who sells anything that might be construed as a gift for somebody. It’s prime time for sales, and selling you items that you want to give as gifts is coupled with fulfillment of what can be a very emotional thing for folks – getting the right gift for each and every person on that list and getting it for the lowest price possible!
And so it goes. Good luck out there and Happy Thanksgiving! And Happy Black Friday … all of them!
Ken Klingenmeier is known in the pages of The Reporter for his reviews of local theater productions in the Greater Indianapolis area, which you can read on his blog, A Seat on the Aisle. He also occasionally opines on other topics.