I know that not every country celebrates Christmas the exact same way we do. Still, it’s my sense that the American model for Yuletide gift-giving is being rapidly adopted by folks in other countries.
But since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving*, what do their retailers use as their signal to kick off the Holiday Buying Season? Do they peg it to the U.S.A, the way some countries peg the value of their currency to the Dollar?
*Yes, I know about Canada having a Thanksgiving, but I’m curious about our neighbors to the north, too. Surely they don’t start Christmas sales in October.
No, they start them in November, just as soon as all the Halloween stuff comes down. But that gives them nearly an eight week shopping season, so things are not nearly so frenetic. So there is no equivalent to Black Friday. When last I lived in the US (41 years ago), the phrase didn’t exist and Christmas shopping was much less frenetic there. In fact, there was a lot of shopping during the last week before Christmas.
I dunno. I guess I’m just interested in learning how pre-Christmas retailing is carried out when it’s in a cultural context other than the one I’m immersed in.
Really, I’m just marking time until it’s okay for the annual re-opening of the “Rudolph: Did the elf murder the flightless bird?” thread.
Our Canadian equivalent to the Black Friday discount shopping frenzy is Boxing Day, December 26. As** Hari Seldon** pointed out, stores just generally wait until after Halloween to start putting their Christmas stuff out, though of course some places bend the “rule”.
Is this similar to the strange “First day of summer” thing Americans have going? You mean there are no Christmas decorations, lights, items on sale ASF before Thanksgiving? No Christmas/winter music blaring on the malls?
That’s nothing, at least one shop in Edinburgh had their display out on October 18th, and there are 2 neighbouring bars on George Street have had a massive outdoor display out since before November.
I too would like to know why anyone would think any shop in the world would wait for the US Christmas shopping season to start before putting its own display out.
The OP is not about Xmas-season decorations, though. In the U.S., “start of the Xmas shopping season” – aka “Black Friday” – does not coincide with “putting-up of Xmas decorations”.
In major American shopping establishments, Christmas decorations will often go up within two weeks of Halloween.
Not at all – this stuff starts going on sale in October.
… I bet this is highly variable in the U.S. Around here, I’d be surprised to hear Xmas/winter music in mall before mid-November. I’m sure it does happen somewhere, though.
In Australia, the inversion of seasons means Christmas comes during the summer holidays. Schools have a couple of months off (depending). Workers take the kids to the beach. Shops put up Christmas stuff (all the winter symbols from the northern historical tradition which make no sense in an Australian summer, but there it is) in October.
Every year, people complain about the shops starting Christmas earlier to get a jump on their competitors, but an equilibrium between getting the first pickings from Christmas shoppers on the one hand and pissing off people by being too obviously commercial about it on the other seems to have settled on an October start.
A significant feature in Australia is that the start of the festive season socially is Melbourne Cup day. It’s on the first Tuesday in November, and the whole country stops to watch a horse race. Every office and workplace puts on little parties with hats and nibbles, organised sweeps, etc. This frivolity inspires the Christmas party season thereafter, where at least every Friday night somebody you know will have invited you to an office party, drinkie-poos, whatever. That’s a minimum - usually it is busier than that.
Business (I mean Big End of Town business, not retail) kind of slows down as part of a mutually accepted gesture to the season. Shopping gets squeezed in wherever it fits in one’s social schedule.
So - no Black Friday as such, but a non-shopping related symbolic starting gun in early November.
Black Friday isn’t really the start of the holiday shopping season here, either, kd99. See here: Christmas Creep.
It’s a bit arrogant, but not entirely stupid.
Consider video game consoles; America buys very nearly as many as the rest of the world combined, so arranging your production schedule around the American shopping calendar would actually make some sense- meaning overseas retailers’ schedules could be in some small way dictated by the American shopping calendar. I imagine the same is true for at least a few other toys and consumer electronics and such.
The day after Thanksgiving has been a convenient retailing start to the serious Christmas shopping season for some decades, mostly because large numbers of people get the day off, and it’s right after a major holiday on which the retailers can promote themselves with parades outside their establishments.
It’s called, Black Friday (only relatively recently) because on that day, many retail establishments sell so much that they manage to accomplish having enough sales to have guaranteed a gross profit for the year (sales net of wholesale costs). American establishments have for some years now started the Christmas retailing season well before the Thanksgiving weekend, but the mad rush to get everyone packed into the stores to buy buy buy! still happens on the day after Tgiving because, again, many people are off work on that day, making it an easy day to target.
So in other cultures, unless there is a convenient day where everyone can shop, such that packing them in becomes attractive, I’d suppose it doesn’t happen.
The more likely outcome, as far as I can see, is that the more obvious benefits comes from not being aligned with the American calendar, in that there’s a more consistent demand placed on the suppliers rather than one big rush.
