Share your best tips for surviving Black Friday
My best tips?
- Sleep in if you are blessed to be off of work.
- Start with a nice, warm shower.
- Dress in something really comfy.
- Wander into the kitchen and make coffee, a turkey omelet, eat donuts or left over breakfast casserole from Thanksgiving yesterday.
- Take another cup of coffee and go find a comfy chair, a bible and spend some time with God giving thanks again, without anyone to impress or hear you, for all the blessings in your life.
- Grab a good book or magazine and a warm blanket/throw and curl up in a chair reading and sipping coffee. Light a nice fire if you have a fire place.
In other words…..
DON’T DO BLACK FRIDAY! Seriously just stay home!
I’ve never seen such ridiculous greed on display on any other day. People stampeding like cattle running from a burning barn to get a TV or toy they really don’t need. They will fight, grab, knock folks down, stomp on them, all to get a bargain that likely isn’t all that great or will be available next week or right after Christmas.
Black Friday feeds into the commercial side of the holidays and on our guilt about not doing/buying enough for those we love. Heck the stores marketing departments have now started having Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving so stores stay open and workers, instead of being home with family and friends, are there working while people are rude and nasty to them. I don’t like to shop on Sundays and wish we could go back to a time when everything but highway exit gas stations were open. I shop Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A because they close on Sundays to give employees time with their families.
Instead of getting up way too early to meet up with friends to shop for things no one really needs with money you really can’t afford to spend because “it’s tradtion”, have those friends over for breakfast and work on a project together. Like plotting and planning to bless someone this Christmas who needs their house cleaned, kids watched, some meals stocked in the freezer. Make some no-sew blankets and blessing bags for the homeless then go out and find people to give them too. DO something for someone else instead of buying stuff. A NEW tradition!
And when you do finally shop, buy local, from small businesses, from direct sales friends, on Etsy, or from a local craft show.
Those are my tips, and I’m thankful and grateful that I long ago gave up the madness that is Black Friday shopping.
Marti Gardner 