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Are you part of the solution?
Or part of the problem? Or both?
I am writing this on the weekend immediately following US Thanksgiving. Here in Canada, Thanksgiving was more than a month ago, and we’ve got a few more weeks to recover so that we can face the prospect of another huge turkey dinner at Christmas time.
But regardless of this difference, the American tradition of Black Friday appears to have well and truly crossed the border.
It used to be that the big discount shopping day in Canada was Boxing Day. I know, down in the Excited States of America that statutory holiday is not well known. It’s part of our heritage as a former British colony. It was once the day you gave boxes of things to the poor people.
In Canada, it morphed into a discount sales holiday. People got up early, lined up in the cold, and took advantage of deep discounts on all the merch that hadn’t sold before Christmas.
Some canny gift givers proffered gift cards on their loved ones, for use on Boxing Day, on the theory that the dollars would go further on discounted post-Christmas gods.
