Black Friday rant…

So Black Friday is upon us. Sounds ominous doesn’t it, a bit like Bloody Sunday, Blue Monday or that other Black Friday, the one with all the cars which really isn’t just a Friday but any bloody day where there are roadworks. 

Of course, this Black Friday is really the old New Year’s Day Sales brought forward - this is before they became the new Boxing Day Sales you understand – all in line with yet another imported American custom. Thanks Wallmart.

Yes, the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday in the US, the day when every shopping mall in every state turns into a small version of Hell and the National Guard are called out to control the crowds of would be paying looters. Having lived through the experience ‘stateside’ a couple of times, I was quite pleased that we didn’t have it. But alas! It seems we can’t escape the madness any longer and this year, for the first time that I remember, black Friday is all the thing in the UK.

Hoorah, we now have Black Friday! Whistles and bells and la-di-da-di…

There was I just getting used to Trick or Treat (that rather enjoyable Halloween impostor) and along comes: Baby Showers, Prom Nights, Tuxedo Weddings, Leader Debates and all that other American stuff. Not only that, but Waitrose (that most English of gentile supermarkets) are claiming that one in six of us Brits celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday. Thanksgiving? Yesterday? Did I miss something, and just what was it that all those British people were giving thanks for anyway?

I see no Indians! Sorry, Native Americans.

Yes, the Atlantic really isn’t the barrier it once was and somehow, what with all those celebs and their Mid-Atlantic accents, our British identity is getting slowly washed away by the waves of that particular stars and stripes sodden ocean.

Our traditional festivals are disappearing to be replaced by stateside’s rough equivalents. Harvest Festival, Halloween, Shrove Tuesday, May Day, Swan Upping, and our glorious bank Holidays may soon be a thing of the past. If we are celebrating Thanksgiving, surely Labor Day, Martin Luthor King Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day (yes, we really should celebrate our own defeat) are just around the corner. Just what will this do for Bonfire Night and will Boxing Day - a day that even I have never really understood in celebratory terms - be embraced across the pond as we have embraced Black Friday and so much other needless crap?

I doubt it.

Meantime we’ll continue to drift on our tiny raft towards what were once the American colonies until one day soon, instead of wishing each other Merry Christmas on December 25^th, it’ll be Happy Holidays so as not to offend. I know, here's an idea -  how about Uncle Tom Cobley and All Day?

Well, we might as well whilst we are about it.

Mmmmmn? Maybe, Black Friday is blacker than I had at first thought.