Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

What to Wear on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving family

Is there any holiday that is better than Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving is filled with family, food, and football and it is usually the food that everyone looks forward to the most. From turkey to mashed potatoes to stuffing and everything else in between, Thanksgiving is truly a day where you want to wear loose fitting pants. But the fact that your family and friends will be about does mean that you really should dress a bit on the nicer side for the food filled holiday.

Of course you will wear clothing in accordance with your gender, but here are just a few tips to help you out whether you are a guy or a gal:

Go with dark colors:  No matter how careful you are you will no doubt have some of your Thanksgiving dinner find its way onto your shirt or your lap. If you are wearing light colored clothing you will risk looking like a bit of a slob where as with darker colors you can get away with it a bit easier.
Be casual: As well as sitting around and eating, Thanksgiving also involves sitting around and recovering from the eating. After everyone is done with the food they will generally make their way to the couches and chairs and take in some football, even if they don’t like it. Thanksgiving also includes kids and having them around will mean that at some point you may want to get on the floor and play with them. By wearing more casual attire you will be able to do so and not worry.
Loose is the word: Be sure that your waistline can expand somewhat. If you go with a belt be sure that there is an extra belt hole or two so that you can adjust after your third helping of turkey. You can also opt for a pair of slacks with an elastic waistband but don’t go with sweat pants as that is a little too casual.
Wear cozy shoes: Since you will be walking all over the house and making several trips back and forth to the food table, wearing a comfortable pair of shoes is essential to your feet being as happy as your stomach will be.
Get in a festive mood: Part of the fun with Thanksgiving is the festive mood it sets. Be a part of that by going out of your way to dress a bit festive. You can find shirts or sweaters that sport turkeys, pumpkins, or anything else that relates to the holidays. A nice touch for a guy is a festive neck tie that features something from the holiday. The point is to have fun with this. If you have kids, a fun thing to do is to make pilgrim hats and then have everybody that comes over put one on. Of course you will want to take them off at dinner time.

Dressing for thanksgiving can indeed be fun. It is usually family and friends so casual is ok, just be sure you are going a little bit classier than shorts and a t-shirt.

Shopping on Black Friday

black friday

The name sounds like a horror movie title or an omen of impending doom, so what does it have to do with shopping? Well, Black Friday is the name given to the day after Thanksgiving; the day that opens the Christmas shopping season and also one that is traditionally known as having some of the greatest sales in the history of mankind, if you’re lucky to get up early enough and get inside your favorite department store to enjoy them.

Most retail stores open at (gulp) 5:00 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving in an effort to get a jump on sales that other stores, who don’t open early enough, lose out on. Dedicated shoppers around the United States set their alarms and drag unwilling husbands or kids with them as they get in line before their favorite stores in the dark and wait patiently for those glass doors to slide open. Did you think that people would only line up around the block to see the latest and greatest movies? Try getting up early on the morning after Thanksgiving and you’ll be treated to an eye-opening surprise. Thousands of shoppers, decked out in coats and gloves, brave the cold, the wind, the rain, to get an early start on their Christmas shopping and the best sales of the year.

While this somewhat dubious tradition has been practiced for more decades than many would care to remember, the term ‘Black Friday’ was created in the 1970’s. In the 21st century however, the observation of the day has reached increasingly growing popularity and numbers of participants, perhaps due to the vagaries of inflation, or perhaps due to the trendiness of it all.

The term, Black Friday, has its origins in several factors, and depending on whether you’re speaking to a shopper or a storeowner, you may get different definitions. For retailers, Black Friday designates, as a news broadcast in 1982 stated, “Some merchants label the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday because business today can mean the difference between red ink and black on ledgers…” Others claim that the term refers to the massive amount of shoppers all vying for certain products and the resulting stress and strain makes shopping on such a day a not-so-pleasant experience. Store employees throughout America, who are the ones who must deal with demanding and impatient customers, have seconded that same emotion. However, because of the negative connotations associated with the term, ‘Black Friday’, many merchants throughout the United States have begun to try to rename the day, “Green Friday”, though such efforts have proven to be lukewarm at best. It appears as if the use of the term ‘Black’ in the day will continue for years to come.

Black Friday is usually looked forward to by a massive majority of women shoppers, who have had their eyes on certain items for the months leading up to the Christmas shopping season, and retailers play on such shoppers, often offering limited numbers of popular items to those who are lined up outside, all the while knowing that their supply won’t match demand. Still, once shoppers are inside their stores, they’re bound to purchase something rather than go home empty handed, which makes such schemes a win-win situation for themselves.

And while hundreds of thousands of bargain shoppers wait in lines for those special, one-day-a-year deals, family members that wait for their return at home scratch their heads and wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, everyone knows that the busiest shopping day of the year is the Saturday before Christmas.

What Is Buy Nothing Day

How to Celebrate Buy Nothing Day

As most residents in the United States know, the day after Thanksgiving is considered to be not only the first official day of the Christmas shopping season, but it is also known as the busiest shopping day of the year.

While advertised as such, the day after Thanksgiving, while a very busy shopping day, is not the busiest. Believe it or not, studies have been made showing that the last Thursday before Christmas is actually the busiest shopping day. Many people, growing alarmed at the rampant commercialism of the season, have decided to do something about it. Their suggestion? Buy Nothing!

That’s right. A magazine called Adbusters founded Buy Nothing Day as a direct challenge to every and all Americans to refrain from buying anything the day after Thanksgiving, as a celebration against what they term ‘rampant consumerism and consumer culture’. Supporting such a measure is free, of course, and allows anyone to participate. First started in 2002, the movement has gained attention and followers not only throughout the United States, but also around the world. Every November 24th, the founders of Buy Nothing Day remind everyone through ads, their website and fliers, that no one was ‘born to shop’. They ask that for a period of twenty-four hours, consumers refrain from purchasing items and gifts for Christmas in order to protest the commercialism that has infested the holiday season.

The focus of the day, which is not an officially recognized state or federal day of observance, is concern over the growing debt and ecological damage that pressured shopping for the holidays inflicts on consumers everywhere. As an alternative, they suggest refraining from bending to pressure buying, and becoming more aware of  products being purchased. Supporting recycling and environmentally friendly products, Buy Nothing Day encourages consumers to look for biodegradable products as well as gifts and products made of recycled materials for their gift giving over the holidays.

At its foundation, the day also serves as a reminder of what the Christmas season is really supposed to be about, and that is definitely not how many Christmas presents we can stuff under our Christmas trees or throwing the largest office Christmas party in the history of mankind.

For people who support Buy Nothing Day, Christmas gifts will most likely be those which are homemade, locally crafted, made of recycled materials or even those that aren’t bought, but traded. Early Americans rarely had money, and trading for goods and services was an accepted form of completing all kinds of transactions. On a humorous note, many participants of Buy Nothing Day don Santa Claus costumes and gather to provide ‘Zenta Santa’s’ to mall shoppers. These special Santa’s meditate and offer stress relief techniques to harried shoppers, in addition to soup, coffee and an opportunity to join in group ‘ohms’. As if that isn’t enough, the group is also joined by participants who don long robes and Jesus masks, and who approach shoppers to inquire, “What would Jesus buy?”

While many people should and do enjoy the holiday shopping season, Buy Nothing Day serves to remind all Americans that we, as consumers, should be the ones to determine what we buy, when we buy it and why we buy it. Commercialism exerts social pressure on all households during the holiday season, and Buy Nothing Day is nothing more than an attempt to put the control back into the hands of the millions of Americans who feel pressured into buying the most, the biggest and the most expensive, every holiday season.

Buy Nothing Day is celebrated by more people every year, and perhaps one day, America will see the day following Thanksgiving, not as a day to begin the holiday shopping season, but as one to reflect on its true meaning.