People who are not American: Does your country have a shopping day that is considered the kick-off to the Christmas buying season?
Asked by
JLeslie (
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November 24th, 2013
In America we have Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, that is a tradition. Most of the country is off from work and school Thursday for Thanksgiving in late November and Friday also, to make the long long weekend. Thursday is for pigging out (oh, and giving thanks) and Friday bunches of people will be out in the malls shopping. The stores do all sorts of advertising and sales to get you to purchase the items on your Christmas list in their stores. Black Friday is often the biggest day of revenues for many stores, or up near the top anyway. It does matter what they sell obviously. Toy stores, electronics stores, and department stores do huge dollars.
Anything similar in any other country?
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No, completely personal choice & really rather random.
Yes… it’s called last minute shopping.
Nope. Christmas decorations go up after Halloween (or, more recently, after Remembrance Day, which is the Canadian equivalent of US Veterans’ Day), but there’s no big kickoff sale. Apparently, though, we’re starting to adopt Black Friday, which I think is just ridiculous.
@Judi, I’m in Ontario, about 400km north of Toronto.
Just wondering. I can see Canada or Mexico adopting Black Friday but i would be more surprised if it were on another continent.
No. Christmas decorations go up mid November usually but there is no special shopping preChristmas day. After New Years Eve we get two weeks of sale period though.
I live in Greece. Sorry I didn’t mention it, it’s in my profile though:-)
As far as I know, in EU, Black Friday is not a custom, with the exception of the UK maybe.
Christmas decorations come in quickly after Halloween. We start making serious preparations for thingiemas after the first Sunday of Advent, so this year it is on the 1st of December. Everything is purple for Advent and then it is all red for Christmas. I will probably take out my decorations next weekend, but we shop through the entire month of December. In fact, our pay in December is tax free (calculated the rest of the year accordingly) and it is the only month of the year our stores are allowed to be open on Sundays, which I find wholesomely-ironic. (I’m in Norway)
We do have something in the fall each year in the city I live that all the shops in the town contribute. They call it ‘Toilledag’ and they have stupid offers and near give-aways of large items but it is only for a day and town gets really nuts. I avoid it.
I don’t think there’s any kind of “rule” about it… as a person who doesn’t work in retail, there’s a yearly timetable that starts with, “They’d better not start decorating for Christmas yet”, then goes to, “Ugh! I just saw the first Christmas decorations!!” to “Well, everybody’s decorated for Christmas now – and we don’t even have snow yet!”.
The feeling is always that stores begin too early, and there are always a couple of sightings just before Halloween. I think the earliest are always big chain stores – the bigger the store, the more well-oiled their decoration rollout. For this reason, I would guess that the international (i.e., American) chains put up their decorations earliest. So, I’m sure they have organized timetables, but I don’t think it’s shared between retail establishments, and I doubt it’s exactly the same from year to year.
In terms of the city decorations (trees wrapped in lights, etc.), those started to go up here about two weeks ago. I think the lights are a good idea; they roughly line up with the time change, making the early darkness a little less depressing.
Only the international chains would try to do anything with Black Thursday. We don’t celebrate your Thanksgiving; it’s not a holiday here, so that phrase doesn’t mean anything for us. But just as the chains sometimes close their offices for no apparent reason on American holidays, their marketing slogans sometimes drift across the border, too.
@Judi Denmark. And no, we do not have a so-called Black Friday to my knowledge. December is a busy shopping month though.
@cazzie I find being open Sunday ironic also.
Christmas is not so popular in Dubai as in USA. Still most of the malls and shopping center offer irresistible festive discounts. Here our shopping season is during the Dubai shopping festival (DSF). Dubai Shopping Festival means that indeed almost every store applies bargain prices, which can be from 20 to 50% less than the original amount of goods. You can buy international jewelry for a much lower price and it’s tax-free. In Dubai, everything is duty-free.
@Smitha, I have 2 nephews in Dubai!
They’ll have blow-out sales right after Christmas but I don’t think it’s called anything. We don’t have Thanksgiving. The stores close early here but they’ll stay open late around Christmas.
For some boxing day (December 26) Is the day some purchase for next years gifts.
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