I wonder just how long it is going to take before the Black Friday frenzy comes to an end.  It really is the ultimate insult to and manipulation of the consumer, but everyone is so caught up they don’t even notice.

There was a time when Thanksgiving was about giving thanks and spending quality time with family during an extended weekend.  I know the day after Thanksgiving has been a huge shopping day since the origins of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade back in the 1920s.  But it never seemed to dominate the holiday and our good thinking before.

Somehow along the way, sellers of high priced electronics started offering deals that lured sensible people out of their beds during the wee hours of the morning on a day off.  Other retailers have followed suite and the shopping mayhem is widespread.  Back in the 60′s, the term Black Friday was first used to describe the headaches the police had to endure to with all of the shoppers clogging the busses, streets, and stores in the downtown areas.  It wasn’t a very favorable term.

More recently, it is used to describe the time when retailers go from being in the red, unprofitable, to being in the black, profitable.  What a huge feat of marketing genius.  Let’s be completely transparent with our motives in the marketing messages.  Let’s not focus on the benefits to the consumer (which is not really our top priority at this point), but instead let them know that we are pulling out every trick we can think of to get them, in herd-like fashion, to bring us pockets full of money on one day so we can turn a profit.  Let’s call it “Give Me All Your Money so I can Make a Profit Day.”  No, that’s too long.  How about “Black Friday.”

Now that the crowds are well trained to show up, there seems to be a growing dissatisfaction with the new “holiday.”  First, it’s not safe for everyone.  In recent years there have been hospitalizations of pregnant women and even deaths as a result of mob-like stampedes to get the few ridiculously low priced items used to lure everyone into the stores.  (Retailers have started to issue numbers to the people waiting in line to curb this behavior.)

Second, people are annoyed that there are only a few ridiculously low priced items used to lure them into the stores. If your odds of being lucky enough to give the retailer your money for the promotional item are scarcely greater than playing the lottery, it may be easier to stay in bed and shop on the internet.

Now that sounds like a great idea – getting consumers to shop from the comfort of their own homes (or at work if that is more convenient.)  We could call that Cyber Monday.