Why Black Friday is Stupid in Russia

Ok, it's stupid not only in Russia, but in Europe, Asia or anywhere else except the United States.

I'm really getting tired of seeing Black Friday sales here in Moscow. There has already been one at Mvideo, a popular electronics store, on Halloween, and now there's a Black Friday sale there again that has been extended till December 9. I've asked my students and other Russians I know what they think Black Friday means, and they tell me it's just another word for discounts and sales. Some of them know that the tradition comes from America, but few of them have ever even heard of Thanksgiving.

This post will be interesting to those of you who are studying English but don't live in the U.S. I'm going to clear up what it all means, and you will finally understand how stupid it is to have Black Friday sales abroad.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that falls between Halloween and Christmas. It's an important holiday in America. According to the story that we all learn in kindergarten, the Pilgrims were bullied because of their religious beliefs and decided to settle in America. Problem was, they didn't know how to grow food and were starving to death because they couldn't feed themselves. The Indians, or native Americans if you want to be politically correct, saved them by teaching them how to grow corn, hunt for wild turkeys, and how to make pumpkin pie. They were so happy that they had a big feast. This of course happened before we started killing them and stealing their land.

Nice feast, but the Indians probably weren't invited

This probably wasn't true, but that's the story. Supposedly, they did have a feast, but it is doubtful that the Indians were invited, even though they helped them.  Another interesting historical fact is that the first question that the Indians asked the Pilgrims was if they had any beer. The Indians knew about beer because some sailors who had come before the Pilgrims had traded them alcohol, which the Indians didn't have, for their jewelry and stuff.

Anyway, none of that is really important. What is important is that on Thanksgiving day Americans get together and pig out on turkey and pumpkin pie. It's a day for eating and stuffing yourself. It falls on the last Thursday of November.  Since it's always on Thursday,  the next day, Friday, is also a day off. Before I came to Russia, in 1997, I don't remember doing anything else on this day but recovering after eating too much turkey. However, somewhere in the mid 2000s Black Friday became super popular. You see, stores make all their money for the Christmas shopping season. It's called Black because before that the stores are "in the red" meaning they still haven't made any profit, and after the Friday following Thanksgiving they are finally "in the black". It doesn't really have any connection with the crowds, madness and deaths that sometimes happen, which is what many people think.

Why is it so crazy? Well, the thing is that the big stores like Walmart like to get as many people to come as they can. They know that on the Friday after Thanksgiving people aren't working and are bored because all they are doing is sitting at home eating leftover turkey. So what they do is take a popular expensive item like big screen TVs, which normally cost say $1000, and they sell them for something stupidly cheap like $300. They actually lose money on the item, but that's okay because there aren't that many of them for sale. It's first come first serve. So since supply is limited and people know about that because of all the hype, they camp out in front of the store and stand in a huge line all night long. When the doors open, they all stampede in, running like crazy. There have been a couple of cases where people have actually died because of getting stepped on by all the other people who only care about getting cheap big screen TVs.

If you want to see how crazy it is, check out this video. If you want to see more, use the key words "Black Friday" plus "fights, crowds, or madness".

Of course, in Europe and Russia, they see how much money these stores are making and they want to copy the U.S. They don't care about how crazy or violent these sales are, they just want to make money. I think it's greedy and stupid. You can't have Black Friday unless you have a holiday like Thanksgiving where the next day is a day off. It just doesn't work.