Black Friday – is it too late to get a refund?
When did Black Friday become a thing in the UK? How did it wheedle its way across the Atlantic? And how long before we are all baking pumpkin pies each November to celebrate Thanksgiving?
I recently went to a restaurant that was planning to “turn American” this Thursday to mark the occasion, while the local butcher has posters up for Thanksgiving turkeys. He is from Croydon.
Black Friday – which, since the Thirties, has been the day after Thanksgiving, and one of America’s busiest shopping days of the year – just sounds so… ominous. And it doesn’t feel like the sort of thing we should celebrate in Britain.
Admittedly, I got involved in the Black Friday sales last year, and ended up buying 10 kilos of Epsom salts and a set of bathroom scales on Amazon I really did not need. (They also did not work but, this being Amazon, it all seemed too complicated for me to send them back.)
Can we please do away with this ridiculous Americanism? I don’t think I can bear the sight of people fighting each other in Asda for a cheap telly, and anyway: haven’t we all had enough of the US for the time being?