Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Green Monday? Just Shop, Dammit, Shop!
All right, (In)Deciders, did you do your American duty by waking up at 4 a.m. on Friday to stand in line for a 50 percent discount on a flat-screen television made by people who live far, far from America? If so, congratulations. You helped drive retail sales up 3 percent, but before you start high-fiving your credit card, please note that this was the weakest Black Friday growth in three years.
Never fear, though: Today is Cyber Monday, the biggest day for online shopping. Millions, billions of dollars, flowing through the inter-tubes and into retailers' coffers. That'll fix everything right up…
[T]he data suggest the significance of Cyber Monday is overrated. "Cyber Monday has never been the biggest day for online shopping," according to Craig Berman, a spokesman for online megaretailer Amazon.com Inc. For instance, Berman said that last year Amazon's biggest shopping day fell on Dec. 10. Historically, the company's biggest shopping day typically falls around the second week of December, he added.
This has led to a new, artificially coined designation — Green Monday. Online auctioneer eBay Inc. cooked up the term to refer to the last day in which online shoppers can still lock in free-shipping deals in time for Christmas.
And if Green Monday doesn't cure our economic woes, there's always I Just Got Fired So I Drank a Lot and Went on an Ill-Advised Shopping Spree Friday.
Or, you know, It's Not a Recession Any More Tuesday.
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NoLongerDesperate, as a non-Christian married to a Christian who raised two Christians I think I have a little insight into all this.
Mea culpa. We were those people that I despise. And I thank whatever God will listen that those Catholic priests diddled those little kids and got 3/4 of my family to no longer go to church, to question the authorities, and to take giving, receiving, praying, and believing all a little more seriously. It's all so ironic. Now that we no longer belong to any organized authoritarian doctrinal church, everyone is more spiritual and more human, more reasonable and more measured. I beg anyone who will listen, do not give up your spiritual authority to anyone else, do not give up your hard-earned cash to greedy, faceless behemoth corporations, get more involved in your locality, slow down, enjoy life, take a walk, bake some cookies, and don't look for fulfillment from a box with a barcode.
DaveW, friend, I couldn't have said it better. I speak as a Christian and most of my fellow believers are cultural Christians, at least so far as the holy-day is concerned. The season is properly celebrated from December 25 until January 6 (the Feast of the Epiphany), but try to convince the typical churchgoer. I'm all in favor of letting the culture have the December celebration of greed and excess, and we can call it (lower case "c") "christmas," sure. That good Jewish prophet doubtless is grieved that our zeal to "celebrate" in his name means that mindless hordes will trample a worker just to save a few dollars at the local site where they more truly worship (as you have so profoundly noted).
Well, whatever festival you celebrate, may it be blessed.
Fuck christmas.
Not Christmas: christmas, or x-mas, or the holidays or whatever. Christian Americans don't celebrate Christmas, anymore, it seems. They shop until they're stupid, which explains a lot. No, I declare the Great American Year End Sale Holiday is now and forever known lowercase-ly as 'christmas'. It's not a religious holiday anymore, unless shopping is a religion, which it is. Americans won't even buy the uselss crap they pile up (how about them self-store places, huh?) from local companies or local firms that make local goods. No, they have to worship at the big box stores owned in super-secret enclaves like Bentonville selling low-cost lead-infused toys and high-quality slave-made clothes from shithole countries that end in "-sia". Or, they spend what little time they have left at their soon-to-be-outsourced jobs surfing the internet for the last penny of savings and free shipping on something that will break and they will throw away in less than a month. And so, I repeat,
Fuck christmas.
just found one heck of a massive top 10 green monday shopping list looks good: http://www.tipsity.com/greenmondaydeals2008/2008/top-10-green-monday-deals-must-buy-2008
I received a number of bookings as a result of offering discounts for Cyber Monday to Green Monday.
Hillcrest Guest House, St. John, US Virgin Islands
http://www.HillcrestStJohn.com
aaaaaaand i'm not even going grocery shopping until after christmas
Everyone in my family over the age of 21 is getting bathtub gin.
Is it just me, or is that an Obama Campaign laptop?