I'm not much of a shopper. Never have been. And if you told me I had to go to a mall or a department store at any point between Halloween and New Year's Eve these days, I'd probably opt for the guillotine. I mean, on Wednesday morning, I went to Aldi and Publix to buy the ingredients to cook a little Thanksgiving meal for my dad, but I came home with a migraine and had to take a nap.
But even so, when I was younger, had more energy, and wasn't disillusioned with consumerism, there was something about Black Friday that prompted me to get up at the crack of dawn, drag myself out of the house, and stand in line to get something I didn't need at an unbelievable price. It wasn't about shopping; it was an event.
Don't ask me what year it was, but I have a distinct memory of standing in line outside Home Depot with my mom in the dark one Friday after Thanksgiving, waiting for the doors to open so we could get some $5 poinsettias. My aunt and cousin drove by to let us know they were heading to Walmart. They'd get what we needed there if we picked up some poinsettias for them — this was the 1990s and there were no iPhones — and while we waited, we ran into one of my best friends and her mom doing the same thing. After Operation Grab as Many Poinsettias as You Can, we drove into Atlanta to go to a specific mall, and once we were broke and exhausted, we met up with my aunt for lunch.
It was a day to bond with friends and family, a treasure hunt, a holiday rite of passage, and an adventure all wrapped into one. We listened to Christmas music in the car to mark the official start to the season, and we marveled and maybe laughed at the lines and crowds still showing up to the stores once we'd already done our shopping. You couldn't drag me out of bed at 5 a.m. any other day of the year, but on Thanksgiving night, I set my alarm clock with enthusiasm after my mom and I finished looking through the newspaper ads and fliers.
Somewhere along the way, it lost its magic. I woke up this morning and glanced at my personal inbox. I had about twice as many emails than I normally do — every store or brand I shop from on a regular basis offering me a discount — and I suppose that's a big part of the "problem." Most of us shop online these days and prefer it that way. I can't even remember the last time I stepped foot in a mall. Back in the 1990s, I don't remember a week when I didn't spend time in a mall.
There's also the fact that Black Friday sales are no longer on Black Friday. In my case, I've had stores contacting me all week to let me know that their sales started on Sunday or Wednesday or would last until next week. Where's the urgency? I blame the stores that started opening on Thanksgiving back in the brick-and-mortar-only days. It seems like it all went downhill from there. Once upon a time, I waited all year to get a $5 set of pajamas or a $20 DVD player. Now, Black Friday sales are just... Friday sales: 30% off everything at Old Navy! Quite frankly, I saw the same sale back in July, and I'm fairly certain it will hit again some time in February.
"It’s still a cultural event, but it’s not what it was some years ago," Craig Johnson, founder of the retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners, told the New York Times in 2023. The NYT went on to interview shoppers who did actually get up and stand in line outside a retailer's door that year. Their samples were either people who don't like online shopping or those simply searching for that childhood nostalgia.
But I think most of us have just lost interest. Last year, over half of all people in the United States skipped Black Friday shopping of any kind — in person and online. Many stores have stopped opening their doors early or staying open late.
"The integrity of the event is pretty much gone," Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada and director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, told CNBC. "Back in the day, a Black Friday price was the best you could ever find on something...never to be seen again. In today’s day and age, promotional pricing just gets better and better from a consumer’s point of view the closer you get to the holiday."
Our modern concept of Black Friday became popular in the 1980s. Back then, Cohen said, "The art was to convince a vendor to give you an enormous discount on cost so that you could create this tremendously compelling offer to the consumer that would then...benefit you for the balance of the holiday season, but it required an enormous amount of work." It was something retailers took an entire year to plan.
But with stores extending their sales to hours beyond the Friday after Thanksgiving and sales beyond special items, "to sustain the ride, they started to dilute it," he said.
For this reason, I say maybe it's time to say goodbye to Black Friday as we know it. Or, at least, rebrand it. It's still an important event for retailers' bottom lines after all. But CNBC also reports that for the last six years, consumers who do take part in Black Friday are more likely to shop online, and that's one reason retailers aren't responding with special hours, events, and doorbusters. The demand just isn't there. Maybe it's time for a new gimmick. Let the memories of a true, old-fashioned Black Friday die with millennials who grew up standing in line outside Home Depot with their moms at 6 a.m.
