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The holiday season is upon us, which means people are looking for the perfect gifts for their loved ones — and not to seem cheap or unappreciative of friends and family, but we are all looking for those inexpensive buys.
When mall rushes become too crowded; online buying, complicated; random stores, obnoxious; and gift cards, too impersonal, we should turn to Black Friday.
Black Friday, a holiday in its own right, is an adrenaline rush of an experience for deal-seeking shoppers, sure to wake up your senses and put gifts in the hands of others.
Ever since I was a little girl, my mother would take me shopping on Black Friday. We would get up around 3 a.m. and drive to the city we felt had the best selection of stores with sales that year.
Standing in a line wrapping around the parking lot of a major retail store in late November weather was always my least favorite part of the adventure as a kid, but with the store workers providing hot chocolate and coffee to those waiting in line, the cold dissipated.
The doors open and people begin to push into the store, sometimes literally. The excitement and adrenaline guide us to the items in the sales flyer that are way more inexpensive than we could ever understand.
How do the companies make any money? No matter, we shop on and laugh evilly at what we think is the steal of the century.
What keeps people going on Black Friday is not the limited amount of coffee they can score from a cart rolling by at 3:30 a.m., but the cheap prices and adventure. The thrill of deals and the feeling of getting away with items that seem ridiculously under-priced is what keeps us going back year after year.
With items like laptops more than half off their usual price, DVDs at $4 and $10 video games, the deals are beyond desirable whether money is limited for you or not. Who doesn’t like a good deal?
You can feel confident in giving your mother DVDs of the sappy movies she has wanted all year and your lover a digital picture frame they can sit on their desk at work because thanks to the Black Friday thrills, they won’t cost you much at all.
For those still unsure whether you should partake in the madness, remember the days when you were a kid and your family would take you shopping during the holiday months. Your parents would send you away in the store to look at random items so they could fill the cart with gifts for you and hide them under their coats.
Well, now you are an adult and likely have a few dollars to your name. Understanding college students are not the richest folks in the world, a few dollars will still go a long way on Black Friday, so buy gifts for your loved ones this year without being sent off to frolic in the store without a purpose.
So after you are satiated with turkey, stuffing and pie, get some sleep so you will be able to wake up at 3 a.m. and enjoy some early morning shopping.
Trust me, the deals are worth the effort and once you have successfully purchased something for everyone on your list, go home and get some rest. I bet you will have pleasant dreams knowing you no longer have to worry about last minute shopping and if you forgot to get something for the neighbor’s dog. The thrills and money saved will enhance your holiday season tenfold.
Heather Pilling is a second-year English student. She is a copy editor for The Maine Campus.
Bangor Daily News