[Magdalen] And so it begins...

[Jim Guthrie]

No Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday (an FDR Innovation in 1939), but I see 
our friends across the pond have adopted Black Friday as their own:

>From today's NYT:

"LONDON — The British don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, of course, but they have 
enthusiastically embraced another great American holiday tradition: Black 
Friday. A little too enthusiastically, it seems. Now, some retailers are even 
trying to dial back some of the frenzy they unleashed just a few years after 
introducing the whole idea.

That is because, for a nation that prides itself on its decorous behavior, last 
year was ugly. Or, what in America is called a typical Black Friday.

At one flagship Asda store in northwest London, part of a retail chain owned by 
Walmart, one young woman was seen on the floor, desperately clinging to a 
40-inch discounted television as several teenagers tried to grab it away.

In Middleton, in Greater Manchester, 200 shoppers barricaded themselves in a 
Tesco store demanding the promised sale goods, even after all the stock had been 
depleted.

The BBC reported that shoppers in different parts of the country had experienced 
gridlock, biting, pinching, punching, kicking and stock flying through the air 
as people leapt over barriers to get their hands on heavily discounted items. 
Police reinforcements had to be called in at stores all across the country for 
Black Friday, a name apparently coined by the Philadelphia Police Department in 
the early 1960s to describe the shopping and traffic turmoil that followed the 
holiday.

Retailers this year are trying to tamp down the mayhem. Asda said it was 
dropping Black Friday this year because of “shopper fatigue.” “This year 
customers have told us loud and clear that they don’t want to be held hostage to 
a day or two of sales,” said Andy Clarke, the company’s chief executive. 
Instead, the retailer said it would offer discounts from November to January.

Nevertheless, Black Friday seems here to stay in one form or another, leading 
many to question exactly why their country seems to have so quickly adopted a 
distasteful commercial binge that exists in the United States only because 
Friday is a holiday for many people.

Indeed, a Black Friday backlash appears to be gathering force at a time when 
some traditionalists are already bemoaning the way that Halloween, with its 
kitsch and goofy costumes and edible eyeball cakes, is slowly supplanting Guy 
Fawkes Day, the four-centuries-old British festival that falls on Nov. 5.

“We have plenty of our own traditions, such as Morris dancing, boarding schools, 
warm beer and aristocrats, many of which are even weirder than 
marshmallow-topped potatoes,” said Sarah Vine, a columnist for The Daily Mail. 
“But at least we don’t try to shove them on unsuspecting foreigners.”

She noted that even her tiny, corner manicure shop in West London had emailed 
her its Black Friday discounts.

Sensing a populist cause, some members of Parliament, including Jeremy Corbyn, 
who is now opposition Labour leader, put forward a nonbinding motion in the 
House of Commons last January railing against large retailers who chose to adopt 
“the American retail custom of Black Friday,” saying it was an affront to public 
order and a drain on police resources.

Sir Peter Bottomley, a Conservative member of Parliament, said he had signed the 
motion after several shoppers were seriously injured during Black Friday 
shopping skirmishes. “In a country of polite queuing, some people forgot British 
patience because they were so excited about special offers,” he said.

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/europe/britain-adopts-black-friday-with-an-all-american-frenzy.html-----Original 
Message----- 

Cheers,
Jim

"The enemy isn’t liberalism;
the enemy isn’t conservatism.
The enemy, is baloney." - Lars Erik Nelson