Well, Thanksgiving's now over (except for the leftovers we'll be eating in some form for about another week)and several of you are out and about experiencing this relatively new phenomenen we call "Black Friday." Supposedly it gets it's name from some theory that says most retailers finally begin making a profit for the year on this day (or finally getting in the "black). I find this sort of hard to believe since stores like Walmart have literally millions of transactions a day and I dont' think they would spend first eleven months simply losing or breaking even just to make a profit in the twelvth. I can assure you they'll make a "hefty" profit in January, even with all the returns and "white sales." They'll make a hefty profit every other month too.
The business I'm in (the residential/commercial rental and real estate development business) is exactly the opposite of the "Black Friday" theory. We make money like "gangbusters" the first eleven months of the year and on the twelvth month we start getting property tax bills and insurance premium bills that "eat up" a lot of the profit we've made so far. I'm not complaining though...if it was easy, everybody'd be doing it!
When I was a kid growing up, I don't remember anything like "Black Friday." The Friday after Thanksgiving was pretty routine except for the fact we were out of school for a long weekend. We didn't go on any special shopping trips and I don't remember merchants putting many items on "sale" during the busiest shopping season of the year. I don't remember anyone saying "I've got all my Christmas shopping done" this early. Shoot, some folks didn't even begin it until about a week before Christmas.
Things sure were different (and simpler) in those days. We didn't have big "box stores" like Walmart or Target. I suppose the closest thing to one of those was Sears (called Sears & Roebuck back then) and they were pretty rare. Whenever Mom went shopping for clothes, she went to a "clothing" store. If Dad wanted to shop for tools or "manly" stuff, he went to a hardware store like Wallace's or Western Auto. Groceries were purchased at a grocery store and tires were bought at a tire store or service station. Nobody had any trouble figuring that out.
Speaking of Sears, I remember how excited we would all get when we would get their annual catalog. It usually arrived around Thanksgiving and there was something in it for everyone in the family. Every household got one and they were between two and three inches thick. They were pretty evenly divided with stuff for women, for men and even for us kids. Mom would pretty much wear out the first part looking (and dreaming) at the latest women's fashions and a virtual sea of new dresses and coats and even lingerie (yeah, I know....I wasn't supposed to be looking at that stuff). They had lots of clothes for men & kids too but Dad spent his catalog time looking at the latest tools and stuff for cars and the house. The last one-third of it was reserved for us kids. It was a "Wonderland" of every toy ever invented including the latest fads.
A few days before each Christmas, my brother and I, along with Mom and Dad would turn each page and make comments as to which toys we desired the most. Funny thing, old Santa must have been listening too because most Christmases, we'd get several of those same toys in that catalog. We'd also get some "yucky" stuff too like pajamas or dress shoes or even (shudder) underwear but the toys always made up for that other junk.
These catalogs (although they got much smaller) continued into our Son's early lives also. We kept the tradition of sitting down somewhere with them while they immersed themselves into it's toy section and we took mental notes on what they wanted. It was pretty easy then because they toys they wanted pretty much "mirrored" the toys I wanted as a boy. Things like toy gasoline stations or electric trains or transistor radios and of course, the "every boy wants" a BB gun (like the kid in "Christmas Story").
The game of "hiding" this stuff until Christmas Day was challenging too, both for my parents and for myself. I kept with Dad & Mom's tradition of keeping everything locked up in the trunk of the car until needed but with the age of SUV's and Mini-Vans, this became more difficult. I remember one particular year, I always drove a "demonstrator" (company car) while working as a car salesman for Lester Motors. Pat & I had gone shopping in Evansville for the boys and drove that car. It had a large trunk and it was only a couple of weeks until Christmas so we decided to leave the boy's gifts in the trunk. A couple of days before Christmas, I had a good customer who had purchased several cars from me over the years, have a breakdown and his car was going to be in the shop over the Christmas weekend. "No problem," I told him, "we're not going anywhere out of town so you can just drive my demonstrator." I had completely forgotten that our boy's entire Christmas was in the trunk....Oh, and did I mention that he and his wife were going to Knoxville Tennessee for the holiday weekend. When I got home, and we remembered about the stuff in the trunk we nearly panicked. Fortunately, I got hold of the guy by phone and we drove up to Beechmont that night and retreived our gifts before they left at midnight and all was saved.
Pat has spent a "goodly" portion of this day decorating the interior of our home for the holidays. She has a lot more patience in this department than I do and she does a magnificient job of hanging garland over our windows, hanging wreaths and decorating the tree. Again, when we were growing up, and because we always got a "live" tree, we usually didn't decorate until about ten days before Christmas. This allowed the tree to stay relatively fresh and not burn the house down. Of course, artificial trees have pretty much eliminated that and are much safer but I still miss the aroma of those fresh cedar trees. I remember on a few occasions we would go out and cut down a tree but more often than not we'd buy one for about two dollars from one of the several "tree lots" scattered about in those days.
People who were "higher on the economic ladder" than we were would "break the bank" and go out to Tudor's Nursery and purchase a "flocked" tree. I still don't know exactly what these were...I just know they were beautiful (and expensive - according to my mother). They looked as they were made of cotton, very "fluffy" and full, and they came in colors like white or soft pastels like pink or light sky blue. There was a family over on Cherry Street who actually "enclosed" in their carport, making it into a family room with double patio glass doors (very expensive and chic for those times) just so they could showcase their flocked Christmas tree. They would decorate it with lights and tinsel and would highlight it with one of those "color" wheels mounted on a spotlight. They even parked their family car in a neighbor's driveway so as to not block the view of it. People drove in from all over the county to admire it from the street.
Some people spent quite a lot of time decorating the exterior of their houses too. This usually involved building your own yard scene since few places sold anything like that. And you gotta remember that lights back then were of the variety of "when one went out, they all went out." It took a lot of time and was a lot of trouble.
Now you can go to Lowe's or Walmart and purchase a huge decoration that you inflate (as in "blow up"). They have moving parts and snow and feature Disney characters and whatever. Takes about five minutes to set them up... just plug them in and they even blow themselves up. During the day, when they're unpluged they lay on the ground like a dead animal waiting to be "revived" when darkness comes. They're even selling "pre-decorated" trees now that the lights are built right on. Just pop them out of the box and plug them in.
If my Mom had left the table right after Thanksgiving dinner and spent the night in front of a store in hopes of getting a bargain, she would have been packed off the the "nut house." Of course, now we don't think anything about it...in fact, we think it's cool.
Oops, well I had better wrap this up. I've got some serious Christmas shopping to do and I plan to do every bit of it right here on this computer. Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!
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