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Black Friday Memories

Istiqlál (Independence), 5 Qawl (Speech), 166 BE – Friday, November 27, 2009 about 2:33 PM Pacific Time

It wasn't called Black Friday then, it was just the day after Thanksgiving. It was the day Grandma opened the boxes containing the Christmas tree decorations. It was the day Grandpa took us shopping for the Christmas tree.

When I was a child we always had a real Christmas tree not one of those faux fir trees that doesn't shed its needles on the floor. We had a real tree, the kind you have to keep watered or it begins shedding needles two days after you put it in the stand.

I loved the smell of the tree. Now you can get that same smell in a can of air freshener, but it isn't the same. Christmas isn't the same as it was when I was a child. Then the stores started advertising the day after Thanksgiving. The after Christmas sales begin on December 26.

Cities, towns and stores decorated for Christmas. The decorations began going up the Friday after Thanksgiving (now Black Friday) and everything began coming down the Day after Christmas. Anyway, to get back to the Christmas tree, going to a Christmas tree lot to buy a real tree indicated that Grandma and Mom would soon go Christmas shopping and ask us what we wanted for Christmas.