Black Friday

People lined up for Black Friday deals last week outside a store that sells caps and jerseys from US teams.

New Zealanders have mostly heard about the American holiday of Thanksgiving here, at least from seeing movies, but don’t really know the details. They probably don’t know it always falls on a Thursday, for instance, so they don’t know why you’d be off work to go shopping on Friday. They don’t know how many families gather together for that big turkey dinner, and are therefore desperate to get out of the house by Friday.

Doesn’t matter… Black Friday has become firmly established here. It’s still a month till Christmas, and besides, everybody loves a deal. I suppose it’s just easier for brands and retailers to use the material they’ve got than to gin up some Kiwi-specific reason to go shopping.