One thing I do not miss during this time of year is: Black Friday. Now I don’t mean to upset those of you who religiously get up in the wee ours of the morning after Thanksgiving to enjoy yourself by fighting through a crowd of the similarly-motivated set upon buying things at insanely reduced prices. Everybody needs a hobby, and if shopping is yours, Black Friday is your Super Bowl.
To me, Black Friday always seemed like the last straw: a bacchanalia of unnecessary shopping and outrageous behavior fueled by advertising specifically designed to manipulate. So when we moved to Mexico, where they don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving, I assumed I would only see Black Friday from a distance, on my TV or computer screen.
I was wrong. Back in 2011, major Mexican retailers worked with the federal government (under Presidente Felipe Calderón) to establish a holiday devoted to: merchandise! They called it “Buen Fin” or literally “Good End”, a contraction of the common greeting “buen fin de semana” or “happy weekend.” They selected the third weekend in November, which precedes the annual celebration of the Mexican revolution, exploiting the long weekend as an opportunity for consumer spending. The government (and big business) saw it as way to stimulate the economy, and even moved forward the payment of Christmas bonuses to ensure workers had pesos to spend.
Buen Fin was this past weekend. The advertising is much less hyped than in the States, and the deals are much less extreme: more like Presidents’ day sales than Black Friday as we have come to know it. The consumer culture in Mexico is also less advanced. Credit is still a relatively new thing, and average Mexicans rarely purchase things they just “have to have” as opposed to need.
But you can see where Buen Fin is headed. It seems to grow year-by-year. The government consumer protection agency is now monitoring for scams associated with the holiday. Academic studies indicate Mexicans are increasingly using credit during Buen Fin and making only minimum monthly payments. I dread when Mexican retailers master the art of the extreme sales promotions with limited numbers of sale items available: orderly queuing is not exactly a Mexican national characteristic!
Lest you think Buen Fin just represents the spread of American consumer culture to its near southern neighbor, I think it is a far more universal trend. Have you ever heard of Singles Day? In China, the rise of consumerism and decline in marriages led to an unofficial holiday on November 11th. The combination of four “singles” on that date (11/11) was deemed auspicious by the many single Chinese men who could not find wives, so they began (as a joke, back in the 90’s) celebrating parties on that date. Once China’s economy took off, businesses seized on the holiday which is now the largest online/offline shopping day in the world, dwarfing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And Singles Day is now spreading around Asia.
Singles Day has run into resistance in Europe, as the date coincides with Remembrance Day, honoring the dead of World War I and still a solemn occasion. But I wouldn’t bet against it in the long run. In the States, November 11th is also Veterans’ Day, an extension of the original US Remembrance Day. That didn’t stop stores in the States, who simply added flags to their ads and special discounts for service members and–voila–another chance to make money!
So if you want to avoid consumerism, you might need to find another planet, not another country. I wonder when the first big box store opens on the Moon?
Pat, you’ve gone too far and completely over the top, “to the extreme” as they say – Mr. Bacchanalia! You have readers like me out here you know. ( Tongue in check but your love of words brings a smile to my face).
Got to agree with you Pat. Black Friday has now migrated north to Canada. Just wondering if people are trampling and kill each other over televisions, what’s going to happen if their food runs out.