Is it me or does it seem like Christmas really does start in July?
When I worked in radio, we started playing the Christmas music on Thanksgiving day, and then it was only one song an hour. Now radio stations across the country are queuing up “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” before the Halloween candy is eaten in an attempt to be the first with the holly jollies.
It used to be that the day known as “Black Friday” was the big shopping day of the year for retailers. The day after Thanksgiving would see folks lining up at stores waiting for the doors to unlock at 9am to cash in on the best deals of the season. Now some stores are offering Black Friday deals all month long, while others are starting their sales not first thing Friday morning, but Thanksgiving night.
Not wanting to let the bricks-and-mortar stores have all the fun, the eCommerce world created “Cyber Monday” – the Monday after Thanksgiving (or the Monday after Black Friday if you’re keeping score) when the deals would flow for online shoppers. It’s also the one day of the year where at least one major etailer’s website will crash making them the top story on all the newscasts and cashing in on a butt-load of free advertising.
Just last year, yet another new shopping holiday cropped up – “Small Business Saturday” – the Saturday after Thanksgiving (or the Saturday after Black Friday if you’re not confused yet). This newly minted day of spending is aimed at supporting your hometown, locally owned, neighborhood business. The organizer of the event, American Express, encourages shoppers to visit Main Street USA instead of the big boxes on Small Business Saturday and spend (lots of) money at the mom and pops in your community.
Sunday, that would be the Sunday after Thanksgiving, or the Sunday after Black Friday, or the Sunday after Small Business Saturday, or the Sunday before Cyber Monday, seems to be the odd man out in this trinity of spending. Or could it be that Sunday is being reserved as a day of rest?
All this hype and hullabaloo leads up to the big climax on Christmas morning when kids all across America will wake mommy and daddy up at 5am to rip open presents.
And then, like Kim Kardashian’s marriage to Kris Humphries, it’s all over in 90 seconds.
Or is it?
Now it’s time for the “After Christmas Sale” where everything that was on sale on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Restful Sunday and Cyber Monday goes on sale again. Only this time it’s on sale for an extra 10% off.
Man, are we suckers.