By Kelsi Peace, Managing Editor
After a lazy Thanksgiving Day spent stuffing myself, halfway watching the Cowboys dominate and marveling at the fluffiest snowflakes ever to fall, I braved the cold to catch a movie.
The Thanksgiving-night movie has always smacked of anti-social, awkward families to me, but sharing a movie with loved ones pales in comparison to the hordes who waited outside Radio Shack in the frigid air.
Forget Thanksgiving Day with the family – sales wait to be shopped on the aptly named “Black Friday.”
The Dallas Morning News reported that this year, shoppers lined up earlier than ever, eager to garner one of the door-buster sales stores offered.
Some stores opened at midnight, a new bow at the throne of consumerism that encourages people to leave their families even earlier to line up. I hope that discounted HDTV justifies cutting out before grandma can serve coffee.
Apparently for 14.3 percent of adults surveyed by the National Retail Federation (NRF), cold weather and early morning lines are a small price to pay – they scampered to line up before 4 a.m. Friday.
These early risers join the ranks of 147 million shoppers, 4.8 percent more than last year, who scamper to uproot the best sale and keep up the family tradition.
Don’t get me wrong – most year’s I’m a statistic myself, braving the frantic shoppers with Starbucks in hand.
The astonishing and, well, disturbing aspect of this whole event is how grossly out of proportion it has grown.
Business Week reported that about 48 percent of surveyed adults carry a higher credit balance this year than last year – and half of those with higher credit say they plan to spend less.
The NRF report almost supports this effort, with the average consumer spending $348 this year compared to $360 last year.
Even so, a $12 difference does little to allay such mounting debt. Surely the average consumer doesn’t believe such a small change will counter rising debt.
And our spending rises with our debt, with retailers raking in an estimated $474 billion by the end of the Christmas season.
For those who didn’t brave the physical crowds at the mall, Monday offered a chance to battle virtual crowds, as an estimated 72 million surfed the Internet for gifts on what is now called “Cyber Monday.” Last year, 60.7 million logged on for Christmas gifts on Cyber Monday.
The insatiable lust for more is best represented by the ridiculous phenomenon of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. What may be lighthearted renders others slaves to the desire to possess – so much so that people will forsake time with family and friends to shiver in the bitter cold or wait in insanely long lines to purchase this season’s hot item. We’ve known for quite some time that a mutated breed of obsessive shoppers turns up at Christmas- let’s remember the Tickle Me Elmo fad or the million-dollar E-bay Beanie Baby sales.
But this year’s craze is apparently to pretend to cut back, stand in line earlier and hope that $20 discount somehow helps a stifling credit card debt.
I wonder how many diehards outside Radio Shack on Thursday vowed to spend less this year. I wonder if the door busters justified waiting in the frigid mist on a holiday. And I wonder why we willfully line up at midnight to spend money we apparently don’t possess. Call me crazy, but I think things have spiraled out of control.
