Eat a turkey, load a gun, swing a belt — Black Friday is coming
Black Friday is almost here, which means it’s time to take off your belt and start swinging it at people.
That’s what happened last year in Vancouver when a group of laid-back West-Coasters gathered outside a Granville Street Adidas store to give the rest of the country a lesson on bad manners.
Some sort of special shoe was on sale, which explains why a shirtless man started waving his belt around in a threatening manner. This was in keeping with the rest of the festive mood because assorted fist fights broke out at the same time, according to a CTV web story.
Most shoe shoppers managed to duck the shirtless man’s belt. Thank goodness reason and common sense prevailed when “out of nowhere, some guy came behind and just started choking him,” a teen witness said.
Aaah. To paraphrase Clement C. Moore, “I heard him rasp, as he was driven out of sight, ‘Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night, by the way where’s my shirt, you lousy cops.’ ”
Black Friday, America’s favourite day for shopping and target practice, attached itself to Canadian culture some time ago, much like the alien in the obscure but very gross movie Life put tentacled death grips on the faces of dispensable actors.
Black Friday sales abound in Canada. They’ve grown too fast to be anything but unsettling. And now they’re starting early. You could buy a gorgeous brown velour sofa six weeks ago at BETTER THAN BLACK FRIDAY PRICES!!! An automaker has been having a Black Friday sale all month. All month? You can’t do that. Black Friday is a day — you can tell it’s a day because it has the word “day” built into it. If you want “Black Friday Month,” you have to call it Black November even though that sounds like a terrorist organization from the 1970s.
Black Friday, though we profess to observe it, has never felt Canadian. Consider its origin, the Friday after American Thanksgiving, which is the fourth Thursday of November. Canadians don’t understand American Thanksgiving, although some (like me) often take the day off as an excuse to cook poultry and watch the Detroit Lions lose at football. Thanksgiving? Canadians don’t even know when their own Thanksgiving is. (The Monday of Labour Day? No, that’s Labour Day. The first full moon after Halloween? No, that’s Easter).
The purpose of Black Friday fails to resonate in a country where you have to keep your guns and ammo locked in separate locations. Consider the story “Shopper carrying TV home from Target shot in Las Vegas.” In a sporting gesture, the robber first fired a warning shot. The bargain hunter resisted. The robber shot him unfatally in the leg. This would never happen in Canada. Why? Because we have no Target stores. Used to, but Canadians hated them. Not enough to shoot them, but shooting a Target store would have a delicious irony to it.
This proves that we don’t have to mimic everything America does, like the stupid touchback rule which has ruined the return game. (Sorry, thinking about football there.) Or sausage gravy, which is a lumpy milk sauce made from sausage fat. It’s so pale you want to take its temperature and send it to bed.
For further reading on the connection between turkey hangovers, deep discounts and violence, I recommend the website blackfridaydeathcount.com — which I’m not making up.
So let America trumpet Black Friday as the official launch of the holiday shopping season. We don’t need it. In fact, Canadians have always had their own day to sale-a-brate with low-low prices, and that day, my friends, is Boxing Day. It falls every year on Dec. 26, or about three weeks after you really needed to save the money. It is backwards and we love it.