That is the question.
Are you someone who is so thrilled by the hunt of a bargain you are willing to face the crowds on the busiest shopping day of the year?
Or are you someone who beleives the world is driven into ruin by overconsumption and would rather not risk life and limb for a new electronic gadget?
I can’t help but wonder if there is a middle category of people. Like the ones who love a bargain {on stuff they really want/need} AND can not be bothered to shop pretty much ever?
If that third category exists I think I’m in it.
I’m pretty sure you’d have to put a gun to my head to shop on Black Friday.
Miss Minimalist offers some suggestions for a White Friday instead.
Parenthacks offers suggestions for Clutter-free Gifts and How To Shorten Your Holiday Gift List
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So tell me – how do you handle your holiday shopping?
Teacher Goes Back to School 
I’ve never been a stuff guy, and I live in Canada, so a few years ago when I first heard of Black Friday, I never really got it. ‘So its a month before Christmas, and stores open at, like, midnight, and people will line up for hours and most times over night to be the first one to bust through the doors to get some bargain on something that mass marketing has told them will be THE thing that will bring them happiness…even when in fact they don’t really need it. And then they beat on each other just so that they can snag the incredible deal on that extra 50″ screen (built by some 3rd world worker making $3 a week) they ‘need’ to hang in the john so that they don’t have 2 seconds to think about crazy things like, maybe, waking up to the crumbling world around us and how they can give to others to make our world better.
And especially now that the economy is teetering on implosion (not to mention the last couple of years when people lost everything including their homes because of debt), all the more reason to go out and pick up another shopping bag full of debt and give the old plastic a little work out for another quick hit of shopping nose candy.
Like so many other of our ‘traditions’, we’ve made it about spending money, feeding the crazy system we’ve allowed to take over, digging ourselves just a little deeper hole.
Nope, definitely not a fan of our system of continually needing to increase our consumption to feed our economic system and glorifying the professional sport of shopping, but I will admit to liking my own variety of ‘nose candy’ by being grateful for what I have and for helping lift others to that level of gratitude.