Break out the sprinting shoes and elbow pads: Black Friday is almost here.
Actually, based on my inbox, it’s already here. I’m getting alerts for “heavily discounted” leather jackets and “unbeatable savings” on prescription glasses. I just got one from the Washington Post: “Black Friday came early. That sale you’ve been waiting for? It’s happening.”
Sorry, Jeff Bezos. You already get too much of my money via Amazon. I’m not subscribing to your newspaper, especially as it surreptitiously lurches to the right in a feckless attempt to avoid triggering the wrath of Agent Orange.
So many deals in the headlines: “Early Black Friday Deals Are Usually Mediocre. But This Year, We’ve Already Found Hundreds of Gems.” “Amazon Canada’s Black Friday 2025 Sale Has Arrived — 94 Best Deals on Apple, Ninja, Yeti and More (Up to 88% off!)”
Yeti? You can buy a sasquatch?
Another alert: “Costco’s Early Black Friday Deals in Canada Are Live For 2025.”
Just typing the word “Costco” gives me a panic attack. My wife has dragged me there on a Sunday. Trying to locate a parking spot is harder than finding Waldo. I’m wheezing while pushing an orange cart the size of an airplane carrier through a human ant farm where everyone is scurrying in different directions all at once.
Costco needs crossing guards. And robotic arms that can help hoist those bottles of 5,000 olives into your airplane carrier. These lunatics are selling blocks of cheese so enormous they could clog the arteries of a hippo. Costco, what am I supposed to do with this much relish?
Turn the Don River green on St. Patrick’s Day?
My wife disagrees. But Costco only makes sense if you are a family of 36.
Do you partake in Black Friday? Are you planning to line up in the pre-dawn hours next week to snag a half-priced air fryer? Me, I find Black Friday more terrifying than bungee jumping into a volcano while holding hands with Freddy Krueger.
Every year, somewhere in the world, there is a story about a stampede or brawl or hunger strike or shootout outside a Best Buy.
I asked my AI assistant to compile some examples. The list of Black Friday shenanigans included a woman in Los Angeles who used pepper spray on the crowd to snag an Xbox. Alas, her diabolical plan backfired when she learned they don’t let you take video game consoles to prison.
One year, a man was trampled while trying to buy a luxury fur coat for his chihuahua. Another year, a mall Santa tried to cut the line at a Target and got pummelled like a sack of oranges. In search of a speed advantage, a man rode his bicycle inside a Walmart to beat the door-crashers and instead crashed into a display of big screen TVs.
A £3 sale on toasters one year turned a sleepy U.K. supermarket into an MMA octagon as warm bread enthusiasts started piledriving one another.
I can only imagine the casualties had the store given away free scones.
I suspect this is why retailers are now blurring all chronological sales boundaries.
It’s not Black Friday anymore. It’s unofficially Black November. It no longer registers as abnormal when I saunter past Halloween decorations at Home Depot in August. I am used to seeing a giant skeleton next to a Weber grill.
Back to school sales that start on July 1? Sure, kids, school just ended. But let’s get a new backpack and monogrammed water bottle. You can’t beat these prices!
Boxing Day used to be Boxing Day. Then it became Boxing Week. Then it started on Christmas Eve. Then it turned into a hybrid Boxing slash New Year sales event with amorphous Gregorian bookends.
Soon, people were still getting cheap frying pans by Family Day.
To preserve civil society — and keep feral shoppers from having trident fights over that last pair of Bluetooth headphones — we should designate every month of the year as a special sales event. Spread out the savings to keep the public safe.
Black November. Green December. White January. Purple February …
If saving money makes people blow a gasket, remove the FOMO pressure. Turn every day into a discount day. Black Friday isn’t a sale — it’s a sociology experiment that occasionally veers into criminology.
For all of our advancements — AI, smartphones, space exploration, gene editing, robot taxis, software that inexplicably gives the Kardashians extra fingers on Instagram — we are still prone to lizard brain madness when a cashmere pullover is 75 per cent off or a retailer puts “door crasher” and “smartwatch” in the ad.
Creating monthly sales — Magenta May! — could dramatically reduce the odds you are concussed by a bargain hunter determined to get that last mystery Labubu.
It’s time to officially turn Black Friday into Black November.
Let’s make shopping safe again.
