Thanks Given

Gobble, gobble, gulp!!!

Thanks Given by Corliss Buenavida  

It was clearly determined back in 1978 by ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ station manager, Arthur Carlson, that turkeys can’t fly. But can they float?

Harvest festivals have been happening ever since people went from ‘just existing’ to ‘having a life.’ Nowhere has this ‘giving thanks for a good crop celebration’ been emphasised to the extreme as it has been in North America. In my home country of Canada, with our shorter growing season, we celebrate on the weekend of the second Monday of each October.

Our neighbours to the south take the event to a whole other level each November.

This long weekend tends to be the busiest travel time for Americans and also the start of the biggest shopping extravaganza in the world.

Thanksgiving, although not particularly a religious event, did start that way with the USA version  commemorating  harvests celebrated by the Pilgrims starting in 1621. Now, it is more about families getting together, eating turkey and shopping for Christmas or any other excuse to spend, spend, spend!

The term "Black Friday", which is the day after Thanksgiving, was first popularized in relation to a failed attempt to corner the gold market by Wall Street financiers. The ensuing reaction caused a stock market crash affecting practically everyone in the nation, many to the point of bankruptcy on Friday, September 24, 1869 – Black Friday.

In the 1950s, “Black Friday” became associated with a specific social disturbance, and indirectly with retail finances. The annual Army-Navy football game was traditionally held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and was drawing a significant number of visitors. Local retailers began offering significant discounts the day before the game to attract these new potential customers. Philadelphia police began calling the day “Black Friday” because of the headaches the large crowds caused for them.

As the discounting practice spread, followed by sales’ increases, many businesses subsequently started using the term “Black Friday” to denote the day when their accounting logs went “from red ink to black”.

In the late 1980s, the term was re-invented and promoted by retailers to denote the discounts offered to the seasonal shoppers and it spread nationwide across the United States and vendors have never looked back. In fact, it has expanded to Black Friday Week with Cyber Monday, a marketing term for e-commerce transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving becoming the biggest single shopping day for the past few years.

For someone like myself, who has been a member of the Green Parties of both Ontario and Canada for many years, Black Friday means the bad and ugly sense of black, as in totally Anti-Green for this semi-blue orb we call Earth. Studies show increases this week of nearly 100% in CO2 emissions compared to average weeks due to all the extra delivery requirements. On top of that is all the packaging waste which primarily goes into land fills. Then there are the returns and replacements which cause more deliveries. There is also more garbage from all the ‘throw aways’, as consumers dispose of items which they realize they don’t want. This can total 25% of all purchases.

This is primarily caused by impulse buying in the short term and with ‘Built-in or Planned Obsolescence’ in the long term, the practice of designing products with a limited lifespan to encourage consumers to replace them sooner than they otherwise would. Manufacturers use this strategy to generate repeat sales by making products less durable, non-functional after a certain period, or unfashionable, thereby shortening the replacement cycle.

Our society, on clear display during this time period, has become a socioeconomic phenomenon of profiteering materialistic consumerism.

My suggestion is to have a nice get together with friends and family, maybe eat some turkey and all the ‘fixings’ from the fall harvest but forget ordering from Amazon and help save the Amazon.

If you do, my thanks are given.

Concerned, Corliss

beerfloat.calm = beerfloat.net not beerfloat.com