Written by Caisi Calandra
Hear me out — I love shopping. At any given moment of writing this article, just know I’m probably tempted to turn this into a Confessions of a Shopaholic thing. In the spirit of keeping things Holiday-oriented, I wanted to do a piece on the crazy shopping “holidays” we have going on this time of year.
Not only do we as Americans spend a lot of money during the holidays, but the average American is said to spend over $700 on holiday gifts and goodies — the final spending amount coming in at around $465 billion dollars, according to ABC News. Now, I don’t know about you, but, while I’m in love with shopping, I do so sparingly because I don’t have a lot of money; I don’t regularly, if ever, ask my parents for money.
My sisters and I got our first iPhones on a Black Friday event because they were cheaper, and my mother, who was still on the edge of getting them for us, decided it was a good deal. I think I was in my sophomore year of high school when I finally got that iPhone, and it was thankfully because of the deals on such a crazy holiday.
I personally still go out on Black Fridays because I like finding affordable gifts for friends. I feel like there’s a lot of criticism around people who go “hard” on Black Friday, but I think those kinds of people just want to finally fulfill a want without breaking the bank. Sure, you can say we’re all sheep and giving into the ever-present obsession with material goods, but we live in a capitalistic society, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon, so I say, “go with it.”
