Last year I flew with my sons from Tampa, Florida to MacArthur Airport on Long Island in order to celebrate my birthday in New York City. We took the train from Ronkonkoma to Penn Station on Manhattan, and as we knew that the arrival time there would be an awkward 4 am, we had decided in advance not to take in a hotel but instead just leave our luggage at the station and head for the streets of Manhattan.

To our astonishment, the streets were packed with people even that early hour (or late for some people of course). My sons were bewildered at that, me more or less wondering, until we remembered that it was the morning of Black Friday. People were looking for good deals of course, and queues were already developing in front of many a store. Mind you, Black Friday is not as familiar concept to us Europeans as it is for Americans. But it is getting there more and more, and now here in Helsinki, we not only have Black Friday, but Black Week in many places.

Well, we had done a lot of shopping already, so New York City would be about other things for us. Our money went to having nice meals, visiting Liberty Island, exploring vegan shops of Manhattan, and buying clothes in New Jersey for the pretty chilly weather (kind of missing warm Florida).

This year Black Friday happens to coincide with Buy Nothing Day - another pretty well-known concept these days. It is the brainchild of Vancouver-based artist Ted Dave who conceived it as a “day for society to examine the issue of over-consumption”.

So the question for some of us might be: which is going to be your “thing” tomorrow, if either. Do they cancel each other out, or is the growing concern for our environment tipping the scale more and more in favor of less consumption. If you really need it, of course it’s a good idea to buy it now. We just need to be asking ourselves more often than, say fifty years ago, do we really need it. Furthermore, it does feel good to hold on to your money and lead a simpler life too.

Maybe we could spend tomorrow just browsing in a store, where the clerks would not even expect us to be buying anything but only come for a friendly chat. Not good for business of course. But we are always free to adjust our daily behavior.

Sources: Buy Nothing Day (Wikipedia) Forget-black-friday-celebrate-buy-nothing-day-instead (Telegraph)