Black Friday? For me it’s as festive as a white Christmas

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/27/black-friday-christmas-shopping-holiday-season

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As a journalist, I have no shame when it comes to oversharing. I’m always spilling embarrassing secrets for money. I’ve admitted the truth about my masturbation habits, my anxiety disorder and my scented candle obsession. But there’s one part of my life that I’ve been too ashamed to write about until now. I bloody love shopping.

I’m a swinger of carrier bags, a sniffer of perfume samples, a fiend for the shiny and new. The idea of Black Friday (the shopping event imported from the US where Christmas shopping is kickstarted with a series of deals and discounts) makes my heart beat faster. But admitting to this is akin to outing yourself as a serial kitten puncher.

Related: Black Friday 2015: the best UK deals

I’m a western woman with far too much stuff. If I never bought anything else ever again, I’d still have far too many clothes to wear, books to read and bath products to get through for one lifetime. This time last year Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up became a bestseller and her method of simple living was adopted by aspirational millennials everywhere. Fashion – or at least, shopping for it – became unfashionable. This line of thinking has contributed to the Black Friday backlash.

There is sense in the backlash. Excessive consumer spending brings about all sorts of problems. This summer the Centre for Social Justice found that household consumer debt was at a record high. Many of us are struggling to keep our houses warm and get food on the table. Not everyone has disposable cash to spare, and when you’re trying to take care of a family you don’t need pressure to spend money that you don’t have.

Moreover, Black Friday has sparked outbreaks of violence. Last year, shoppers in Asda brawled over cut-price TV sets, only to try (and fail) to profit from their spoils on eBay. (Though I don’t think you can blame Black Friday any more than you can blame a vicar for a fight at a funeral.)

If you’re a savvy shopper and stay focused, Black Friday is just an opportunity get a discount on the goods that you already knew you wanted. If you’re buying gifts for friends and family, you might be inclined to choose something they will use all year round. Thanks to Black Friday my little sister will be getting some posh bedlinen (something I know she’d like) instead of ending up with a trio of unusable ginger and cranberry glitter lip balms.

A shopping event at the end of November reminds us to get organised and forces us to think practically about gifts for the people we love. You might think it’s an evil invention that insists we all offer ourselves up to Mammon, but I reckon it’s helped me to reclaim Christmas Eve, and spend more time with my family and less time crying in a queue in Superdrug, trying to convince myself that anyone I’m related to could really use a snowflake-embellished hot-water bottle cover.

A couple of years ago I was flat broke and had all my cards declined while buying the ingredients to make fudge for my friends – because I couldn’t afford to buy them gifts from a shop. Now I’m more financially secure, I know I’m incredibly lucky to have extra cash, and it brings me an enormous amount of joy to spend it on extravagant gifts for the people I love. Having struggled with consumer debt, I know how important it is to avoid spending more than I can afford. But Black Friday allows me to be especially generous, and gives me a hit of the shopping fix I crave.

Besides, we’ve been given incentives to shop before Christmas since mass manufacturing was made possible by the industrial revolution. Back in 1867 Macy’s department store in Manhattan stayed open until midnight on Christmas Eve. Black Friday isn’t an alien and worrying concept – it’s a different name for a practice we’ve been indulging in for ages.

For some, Black Friday is an invitation to be excessive, for others it’s a symptom of consumer sickness and an occasion to be sanctimonious about the “true meaning of Christmas”. I suspect these people would rethink their views if they were presented with a gift-wrapped batch of my handmade festive fudge.