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| Pictured: Black Friday in the United States / Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo, EPA |
For the past few weeks, my inbox has been full of mail about 'the best Black Friday deals' and 'Black Friday and Cyber Monday exclusive sale codes!'. There is not a single store that is not getting involved, even the small local shops I pass while going to university had banners up that said 'Black Friday Sale!'. Last year I was not that shocked that some of the big international companies that are located in The Netherlands had Black Friday sales, they had stores in the US too, so those sales seemed like an international thing to me. I mean, I did think what the hell do we need this American tradition for when we don't have a thing like Thanksgiving? But, only big companies did it and it was not a big deal for people, or at least we did not speak about it that much.
This year, the opposite was a reality. Every single store was participating, even supermarkets had Black Friday deals. Smaller businesses were forced to partake or else they would get left behind. Everywhere you went you saw posters and folders, and people on the radio and on the TV were talking about Black Friday. Now, I can get that around December, stores and online stores will be busier and will have some more special sales, but them happening on this specific day or weekend bothers me for different reasons.
First of all, we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. We don't even have a similar holiday. We do have Sinterklaas on the fifth of December (Sinterklaas gives children presents by sliding down the chimney if they have been behaving well that year), which could be compared to the American way of celebrating Christmas. In fact, the Americans 'stole' Sinterklaas from the Dutch after taking over their colonies in North America, calling it 'Santa Clause' which is pretty much pronounced the same, but that is not what I wanted to talk about.
What I wanted to say is that Black Friday is planned quite ideally for people who are celebrating Sinterklaas, because that is the next and maybe they had the chance to get some affordable presents that they wouldn't normally be able to get. However, Thanksgiving is not comparable to Sinterklaas. Thanksgiving is a holiday that originated out of the Americans thanking Native Americans for 'giving' their land to the colonisers. This is not only problematic because the natives did not just happily give their land to the colonisers and thus this holiday is ignoring the violence and oppression that took place, but also because of the ridiculous number of animals - turkeys specifically - that are consumed on this holiday, which is extremely bad for the environment.
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| Pictured: Donald Trump celebrating Thanksgiving / Picture source: newsweek.com |
This holiday is so American in every possible aspect: it's historically problematic, it's about mass consumer capitalism, and if you don't respect this holiday, you are unpatriotic. Tradition is that after having eaten yourself fat, you go shopping for the cheapest and best Black Friday deals the next day, before consuming more. Supposedly you are going Christmas shopping for your family but Black Friday is also known as for its extremely low prices on electronics, which results in people getting new TVs and lots of gadgets that they did not actually need.
So basically, what I'm trying to say is that Thanksgiving makes no sense and Black Friday happening right after it does not make much sense either - there does not seem to be a clear goal. Black Friday is simply about senseless consumption and we already have plenty of that in the West, without a special day for it.
Another problem I have with Black Friday, in my country specifically, is that these 'amazing' sales are not even that impressive. Most stores just seem to have twenty percent off of their 'entire' collection - AKA only the cheap articles in their collection. If you are brave enough you will take twenty-five percent off, but maybe then that only applies if you buy three items at least or spend a minimum of one hundred euros. Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad about stores selling their things cheaper, my problem is with the fact that the idea behind Black Friday was that on this one day, you could get that one item for a price you could never imagine.
You always see these videos this time of the year that show Americans fighting over items and people sleeping in front of stores, but the deals there were just like any other regular 'special deal'. Plus, most stores make their deals available for the entire week, rather than just for one day. So, what is the point behind calling it Black Friday if you are actually doing the same thing as you are doing all the time? I know Western Europe really looks up to America and the way they do things for some reason, but if we are going to copy them, we can at least do it right, right?
There is also the thing that these sales really harm small businesses. Everyone is doing it so they have to participate, which results in them losing money because they can't actually afford to stunt their prices, but if they don't then they would lose more money because people would shop elsewhere. Some shopping streets in The Netherlands resisted Black Friday for that reason specifically, and I saw on the internet that countries like Ireland were promoting 'Green Friday' which revolved around buying things locally and supporting products from your own area or country.
Stunts like Black Friday are harmful to small and local businesses, even if they aren't particularly impressive stunts.
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| Pictured: Black Friday in The Netherlands / Photo by Robin Utrecht (NRC) |
Now, my biggest problem with Black Friday isn't that it is stupid and American or that it is senseless capitalism, but the fact that it is extremely bad for the climate. In most Western countries, especially my country, online shopping has become huge. It seems harmless to shop online, but it isn't. All those products that were once shipped to one location with one big truck ar enow shipped to thousands of different locations with multiple smaller trucks. The roads become busier, more kilometres are travelled for fewer items, and there is this huge pressure to deliver everything as quickly as possible, so the industry does not even sleep.
If you order something before midnight, you will receive it the next day. If you aren't satisfied with your purchase, you can return it for free and another small truck will come and pick it up again, covering even more kilometres. I can see why people would see all of this as a positive development, but it is extremely harmful to the climate. You would think that with all of the discourse around climate change that is going on right now, people would be more careful with things like this, or that companies would purposely not participate or change their policies, but that is not happening. Capitalism like this makes consumers blind to the darker sides of purchasing items because everyone is buying things, every company is participating, so how could it even be a bad thing?
I hope I did not make you feel too guilty about buying things last Friday. I often order things online as well, and I definitely am more likely to buy a product when the price is reduced by a few percentages. The thing is that we, consumers, are not to blame. It is the big companies that are responsible. I would say that governments are responsible as well, but it is quite clear that multinational companies have more power than any government. Big companies have the power to change things, but they don't. Their hunger for money never seems to end.
It is not even just The West anymore: consumer culture is nearly present everywhere. Big corporations have stores in every imaginable country now. Can you name any country without a McDonald's?
But, it is The West who started with all of these traditions and special sales, so I do think that it is our responsibility to abolish them and be an example for other countries. How? As consumers, we can't do much except shop locally and be aware of what we are buying and how we are buying things, but those things can have a large impact if we all start doing them.
