Thanksgiving & Black Friday

I have now experienced my first ever Thanksgiving celebration in the US. There is really nothing quite like it anywhere else, or at least as far as I am aware (yes I am aware that they celebrate it in Canada as well). I can remember the Harvest Festival when I was at school in England, but this is somewhat different as it is very much centered around the family getting together. In that respects it seems to be as important to people here as Christmas (in fact so would argue, more so) as it seems to be especially important for families to get together at this time. I never really understood what the deal was until I saw a news report showing a junior school reenacting the first Thanksgiving. I found the following which seems to explain the origins of the celebration:

The Pilgrims set ground at Plymouth Rock on December 11, 620. Their first winter was devastating. At the beginning of the following fall, they had lost 46 of the original 102 who sailed on the Mayflower. But the harvest of 1621 was a bountiful one. And the remaining colonists decided to celebrate with a feast -- including 91 Indians who had helped the Pilgrims survive their first year. It is believed that the Pilgrims would not have made it through the year without the help of the natives. The feast was more of a traditional English harvest festival than a true "thanksgiving" observance.

If anyone wants more information I got this from:
(http://wilstar.com/holidays/thankstr.htm)

I was invited to celebrate the day with my son in law’s parents, which included their married daughter and her husband. I was amazed at the level of preparation and just how much food their was, which centered around a large (and I mean HUGE) turkey. This was followed by traditional foods such as Pumpkin and Pecan pies. I made a very traditionally English Apple Crumble which people found interesting as it is not a common dish here it seems (which is probably why some called it apple cobbler..).

It also seems that it is traditional to have some ‘bad’ Football games on the television. By Football, I of course mean American Football. By ‘bad’ I mean that teams can choose whether to play or not and it is usually top teams versus bottom teams, with the inevitable result. In the UK the Boxing Day fixture is a major part of the Football scene. There is no choice, teams have to play on that day as part of the regular league program, unless it is called of due to bad weather. The games I saw parts of on the TV looked like they had packed stadiums so people obviously turn out for them. Overall it was an extremely pleasant day, with the usual over indulgence in extremely good food.

Then I discovered Black Friday.

Having holiday sales is nothing new to me. In both the UK and Australia, major sales happen from time to time but particularly on Boxing Day where some people will queue for days (not a pleasant thought considering how cold it can get in England during the winter). Boxing Day is not celebrated here, at least not in the way I am used to. It is just another day it seems. Here, the major sales are on Black Friday, which follows after the Thanksgiving holiday. The major stores advertise their bargains (and in some cases they are extreme) but, instead of opening at the normal time, or just early, like 8 or even 7 in the morning, they open at crazy times like 5 am!

I somehow volunteered to go with my daughter to the local Sears (a major department store) as she wanted to get some early Christmas presents for her husband. I might add when I ‘volunteered’ I did not realize it would mean getting before 4.30 in the morning to go and stand outside in the cold (like freezing, literally). Fortunately where we were the queue was not too bad and people were reasonably well behaved, although I had to be more than a little strident to defend something I was supposed to buy. My daughter said she saw several instances where there were only two or three items of a particular line on sale and in each instance, two people had their hands on the last item and were busy glaring at each other. In one case the security guard came along and literally confiscated the problem item (play nice children or no one has it…). She also said that she got the last one of a sale item and then was asked repeatedly (like many times) by one woman, “Do you really want that?”

I also discovered that they usually have more items on sale, but the discount is less (still very good, say 60% instead of 90%) and these are put out at something like 9 am. So if you miss getting something at 5 am, wait around and get that it at 9, and still get it relatively cheaply.

After the hustle and bustle of this my daughter and I went and got a much needed coffee as the nearest coffee place was open and doing a good trade. We then went of to another store which was no where near as crowed. I might add that the whole shopping center was open. It seemed a little surreal given that it was about 5.30 in the morning.

However, it seems it is not always so civil. In places like BestBuy, a major electrical store, the queues are huge. However, it seems that what they do is that at 3 am they start at the front of the queue and ask people what they want and give them a voucher for that particular item in the sale. They go along the line until the vouchers are used up as there are usually very limited numbers of the major items on sale at the crazy prices. Then just before the opening time, those people are let in and they buy their particular choices using their vouchers. I gather it is only one voucher per person. Sounds very sensible and orderly especially give what happened at one Wal-Mart store in Manhattan.

There is no real equivalent of Wal-Mart in the UK, in Aus, it is a bit like a very large Kmart, but cheaper. They do most items you find in a large department store (except they are usually on one level) and the furniture is very limited and usually the type you have to put together yourself. It seems that in this particular store the crowd literally broke down the front door before it was supposed to open and trampled to death one of the staff trying to stop them. When other staff members tried to intervene and get people out of the store, explaining someone had been killed, the type of responses they got were “I have waited in line for hours so I am getting what I came for so get out of my way”. N0othing it seems will stand between a bargain hunter and their prize, especially at around 5 in the morning on a cold winters day.

The reason why it is called Black Friday by the way as it is traditionally when the retailers go into the black. Sadly, I am not sure that will happen this year.

On another note, I have finally discovered why Boxing Day is called Boxing Day. It seems Boxing Day is a traditional celebration dating back to the Middle Ages, where gifts were given to employees or to people in a lower social class. Apparently, on December 25th people of similar class would exchange gifts, but gifts were not exchanged with the lower class until the next day called Boxing. Originally a clay box was used in the work place where apprentices, masters, visitors, customers, and others would put donations of money into it, like a piggybank, and then, after Christmas, the box would be shattered and all the contents shared among the workers of the shop. This habit of breaking the Christmas box lent its name to Boxing Day.

Amazing what you learn.

Finally. Americans deride Canadians, in the same way people from Victoria deride Queenslanders (mind you, NSW people say similar things about people from Victoria) and Brits deride those of Irish extraction. However, I think the Canadians are actually pretty smart as they seem to exploit the best of both their English background and their American neighbours. They celebrate Thanksgiving AND Boxing Day. Not sure if that means they have major sales for both holiday periods though.