Holiday Season and Boxing Day in a Down Economy
In my humble opinion, the Christmas week, a.k.a the holiday season, is the most important time of the year in the western world and I am fascinated by the dynamics behind. There are many sides to the story in play here; there is the religious side which I find not too bad of a storyline and then, there is the capitalist side, which I find very creative. I don’t think myself as an expert on the matters of the heavens, so no comments there. For the other part, I think, the capitalist side of the story is somewhat the endless pursuit of encouraging and deceiving people to spend more by capitalizing on side stories around the Christmas theme. Yes, sure, a little bit of Santa Claus is good for the kids’ imagination and also for the economy. But what about Boxing Day?
For people who are not living in Canada, Boxing Day is the Canadian version of the Thanksgiving weekend in US. For people who are not living in US, basically these days in North America are the “best days for shopping because of the huge deals around” kind of shopping days. Of course, you usually get to enjoy these deals if only you wake up at 5 a.m. on the 26th of December and then line up in front of the store before it is open around 8 a.m. (let me remind you this is Canada, so we are talking about some serious minus something temperatures out there) and then when the doors are finally open, rushing in while racing with your competitors and then finally putting your hands on one of the limited quantity “doorcrasher” deals in the store. Sounds like a challenge? You bet.
Given the state of the economy, the looming recession and the worst financial crisis of the century in action, I was curious about how the shopping during the boxing day would turn out this year. So, I cruised around couple of retailers and shopping malls early afternoon. In one shopping mall, it took me 35 minutes to find a parking spot. In another one where I parked almost a mile away, all the good deals were already sold out by early morning. By 7:30 pm, half an hour before all the malls closed down, everywhere people were still shopping like there was no 2009. I could not make sense of all this. With all the tight credit and job losses, companies shutting down, there had to be a reason I didn’t know. And then, I saw this:
Shop, damn it, shop. It is your patriotic duty.
Just when I thought the boxing day was all about boxing and returning the unwanted gifts from the Christmas day and getting new ones instead, I suddenly realized that it was all about patriotism and the love of the country. One can only appreciate the creativity of the capitalist system.
Happy Holidays to you all…
Written by Kaan Bora on December 28th, 2008 with
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