The expression, "Black Friday" actually originated with people who worked in retail stores. It was the busiest shopping day of the year, with Americans having an informal holiday (few employers required their employees to work on the Friday after T'giving) and wanting to get a head start on their Christmas gift buying.
Then the general public adopted the expression because shopping could be so miserable with the stores being insane crowded, and store clerks being "on edge" from the strain.
We have come a long way from that.
Black Friday sales are promotional events not only for retail "brick and mortar" stores as before, but for mail order houses, service companies, restaurants(?), even cruise companies (Viking, Holland America. etc.) are having Black Friday "sales," offering supposedly reduced prices for those wise shoppers who pull the trigger on (or around) this august November day (see the play on words there?).
But if you look at the ads, they are no longer talking about getting a jump on Christmas (gift) shopping, but buying stuff for yourself, which is a total inversion of the concept.
The topic of this thread is not Black Friday shopping, but the accumulation of near-worthless possessions, an American "hobby" which is never acknowledged but is ubiquitous nevertheless. Indeed, it is the most prevalent hobby in our society, and the entire economy depends on it.
In the past year I have started watching YouTube videos presented by a fellow named "Russell." He is an Australian who has moved to the Moscow area, and he posts videos describing the apartment and house markets (mainly apartments) in today's Russia, mainly Moscow. It is actually quite interesting, and although Russell himself is a rather grotesque physical specimen he is quite articulate and provides the information in a complete, informative, and entertaining way.
Why do I bring this up? Because when I started watching these videos the first thing that came to mind was a question: But where do they keep their "stuff"? You see a nice, fully furnished apartment (they are virtually all rented fully furnished and decorated), with adequate closet space, but that's it. Where do they keep their stuff?
Then it occurred to me to ask myself, "What stuff?" In my case, my woodworking tools, my gardening tools, the tools and supplies that I use to keep the cars clean and maintained, my golf equipment, tennis equipment, my bicycles and bike "stuff," my closets full of winter, spring, fall and summer clothing, including specific footwear for all. And my wife's "stuff" as well, which includes not only clothing and shoes, but special purpose entertaining stuff, decorations for all seasons, inside and out, and HER golf and exercise stuff.
These Moscow apartments - even the largest and poshest of them - had essentially no room for "stuff." Just a small locker in the basement...maybe.
And here we are on another Black Friday, pondering what ADDITIONAL stuff we might want. Or might we want to buy for our loved ones.
And parenthetically, a large portion of the aforementioned stuff was made in countries where - to put it mildly - we would not want to live, and about whose tariffs we now complain. Just sayin'.
As I am well into the December of my life, I feel an obligation to get rid of the stuff that I don't actually need so that my heir does not get stuck with that humungous and odious task, getting rid of it and trying to salvage some value out of it.
How about you? Do you have too much stuff?
