Black Friday Makes Me See Red

My eleventh-grade English teacher, the redoubtable Ms. Miler, ingrained in her students a number of rules for effective expression, among them: avoid words whose connotations undercut the intended meaning of a passage.  Never write, to cite her example, that "the heroic spirit lurks within everyone," for to do so diminishes the admirability of its subject by depicting it as acting sinisterly.  Unless employed deliberately for ironic effect, connotational conflicts detract from the clarity and force of communication.  I ponder these considerations every time so-called "Black Friday" rolls around.

The adjective “black,” when used figuratively, almost always connotes evil, suffering, or woe. It’s not for nothing that October 29th, 1929, the date of the infamous stock market crash, came to be called “Black Tuesday.” And the medieval pandemic known as the “Black Death,” far from heralding an opportunity for Europeans to purchase antibiotics at loss-leading prices from their local apothecaries, actually killed in excess of 75 million people. Therefore I find it perplexing that the biggest shopping day of the year, an occasion that retailers and consumers alike anticipate like Druids awaiting the summer solstice, goes by such a grim appellation.

Not until my thirties did I discover that the Friday after Thanksgiving earned its title because the high sales generated by the day’s low prices put retailers “in the black,” an accounting idiom meaning “profitable” or “not in debt.” The phrase dates back to an age when bookkeepers kept handwritten records in pen, using black ink for positive numbers and red ink for negative ones. So in this case, the conflict of connotations is only apparent, not actual. Still, if I were a CEO desperate to offset a lackluster year in a single day, I would probably refrain from associating my efforts with the Great Depression or bubonic plague.

However, “Black Friday” can inspire behavior which makes it merit the primary sense of its moniker. Yesterday’s proceedings gave rise to the following headlines: “Crazed shoppers stampede at Target”; “Marine stabbed at Best Buy”; “Mall food court placed on lockdown after fight, reports of gunshots”; “Police called after 'thousands' rush Toys ‘r’ Us”; “Woman busted after gun threat at toy store.” A tragic spirit animates these figures who want some product so badly that they’re willing to rise before dawn, queue for hours, and perhaps even resort to violence in order to obtain it. As time passes and tensions mount, the darkness that flees the sky finds a haven in their hearts.

Even those who manage to make it home with their souls intact still lose something in the process. If nothing else, they lose their hard-earned cash. Stores hold sales, not out of altruism, but to attract customers - and no matter how much those customers save on their purchases, they still end up with less money than they started out with. The very mechanism that puts shopkeepers in the black puts shoppers “in the red,” that is, leaves them insolvent, owing. Indeed, red, signifying not just deficit but anger and blood, serves as the true color of the day. So next “Black” Friday, put your finances in the black, and stay home. In shopping, as in global thermonuclear war, the only winning move is not to play.