Black Friday

There seems to be some dispute about the origin of the term "Black Friday."  I found four possible origins on the internet, each one a little more palatable to eager modern shoppers.  One story claims that Southern plantation owners in the 1800s could buy slaves at discount on that day. (Could that ugly story be true?)  Another claims that the term started with the crash of the gold market in 1869.  Yet another claims that the term was used by police in Philadelphia to describe the heavy traffic on the sidewalks and streets of that city on the day after Thanksgiving.  Modern retailers like to say that it marks that point in the year when a business begins to turn a profit, moving from the red into the black.

Whatever its origins, the last place any of us should be is crowded into a department story on this day.  We don't participate much in our consumer culture these days in any case, but when we do we like to shop local.  And the only places you could shop out here in Atlantic Beach might be Ace Hardware, the Dollar Store, or Food Lion, all of which we visited today and none of which were crowded.  Instead of shopping, we did what many of our neighbors seemed to be doing today - we went out on the beach, where people were fishing and shelling and playing and running.  We walked about a mile, down to the breakers out from the Picnic Area, where last weekend I had seen so many surfers congregating.  They were out on the waves again today and seemed to be having fun.

As this day marks the official start of the Christmas season, that means we can play Christmas Jazz instead of Cool Jazz at dinnertime.  And I have been noticing some decorations have begun to appear, scattered discreetly around the condo:  festive stickers on the mirrors, a tiny tinsel tree as the centerpiece of the table from which I am writing, and other cute seasonal decor.  And most of the afternoon, between a trip to the hardware store and an exploration of an electrical outlet that is not operational, I somehow managed to hang a string of Christmas lights on our balcony. 

Groups of beach-goers were coming back while I worked and could not avoid seeing what I was doing, as our balcony is directly over the walkway.  "What a nice thing, to hang Christmas lights out for your wife!" one lady called up to me.  "I only wish it was 30 or 40 degrees!" I said; it was in the 70s on the deck, and I was soon breaking out in a sweat in the hot sun, conditions I normally do not experience when hanging Christmas lights.  Another man called up, "Merry Christmas!"  Christmas decorations seem to gladden the hearts of everybody.