The thought of shopping on Black Friday is about as appetizing as the steaming plate of giblets that went untouched the day before.
Black Friday is Thanksgiving’s gizzard, liver and kidneys, and goes against the heart of what the holiday is all about.
Cyber Monday, on the other hand, is the warm, moist pumpkin pie that is the day on which Americans give thanks.
Black Friday was born the day after the first modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 1924. But it didn’t earn its moniker until the 1960s, according to blackfriday.com.
In the 1990s, stores opened their doors as early as 6 a.m., which eventually crept to 4 a.m. in the 2000s.
In 2011, Walmart was the first to open at midnight. Since then, Walmart and other retailers such as K-Mart, Sears and Macy’s have opened on Thanksgiving Day itself, which is known as Gray Thursday.
Gray Thursday sounds as inviting as that steaming plate of giblets. After I’ve gorged on actual Thanksgiving delicacies, I want to relax at home and watch football. The last thing I want to do is get up, go out and shop.
Cyber Monday is the cure for the steaming plate of giblets that is Black Friday.
I also would not want to work on Thanksgiving Day, which is what many Americans now have to do thanks to Gray Thursday, which exists only because of Black Friday.
On Cyber Monday, I can shop any time I want, from any retailer in the country, without a single retail employee having to give up his or her Thanksgiving Day for work.
I also don’t need to stay up until midnight, or wake up at the crack of dawn to get a deal on Cyber Monday.
More importantly, Cyber Monday lets me skip the “28 Days Later”-like, rage-infected mobs of frenzied, sometimes dangerous shoppers.
The first person to be killed from a Black Friday-related death was 34-year-old Walmart worker Jdimytai Damour. He was trampled to death at Walmart’s Valley Stream, New York store after an “out-of-control” mob “smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him,” according to an article by the New York Daily News’ Rich Schapiro from Nov. 28, 2008.
But Damour was not the only person who was killed or injured from Black-Friday-related activities.
There have been seven deaths and 90 injuries as a result of Black Friday since 2006, according to blackfridaydeathcount.com.
No deaths or injuries have been reported to be caused by Cyber Monday.
Black Friday might not die anytime soon, but it should. It exists for all the wrong reasons, and has spilled into Thanksgiving Day, which is a shame.
Cyber Monday is the cure for the steaming plate of giblets that is Black Friday. Cyber Monday is convenient, comfortable and safe. But most of all, it doesn’t eat at the heart of what Thanksgiving is all about.
