Black Friday Nostalgia

"And on the same special tablecloth we used every year, we would list with a felt-tip marker what we were most grateful for: I'd write my dog and American Girl doll; my mother would write me and my sisters; my college-aged cousin would write her boyfriend du jour (there were many crossed-out names on the fabric). Then I would sit down with a pile of buttered mashed potatoes and wait for midnight,"

"The single day of massive discounts could, of course, get ugly. Starting in the middle of the night, consumers sprinted to as many stores as possible to gather as many Christmas gifts as their Honda Odysseys could hold. Teenagers working at big-box stores had to miss Thanksgiving dinner entirely to set up before the shoppers descended. A friend who worked at Target told me that his manager always delivered a motivational speech before the doors opened."

Every Thanksgiving childhood included a Wacky Tacky Talent Show and a special tablecloth where the family listed what they were grateful for with a felt-tip marker. Midnight marked the start of Black Friday, the holiday of shopping that made the narrator's 'mini shopaholic' heart beam. The family prepared months in advance, made matching T-shirts, and created a store-by-store strategy to chase doorbusters, BOGOs, and discounted home goods. The pre-dawn shopping surge forced some teenage employees to miss Thanksgiving dinner. Managers delivered pre-opening motivational speeches, workers readied displays, and shoppers sometimes fought amid the chaos.

Read at The Atlantic