Different

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, the day on which most Americans are indoors with their families celebrating the start of the festive season and enjoying the traditional turkey lunch.

It is also the one day in the year when American shops are closed and the roads are free of traffic. Indeed, there was one year when, together with two of my colleagues, I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas by way of the Mojave Desert. It was a wonderful drive for, until we got into Vegas, we encountered no traffic to speak of.

The day after Thanksgiving is quite another thing and is known as Black Friday. This is the day that the stores commence their Christmas sales. Some folk queue up to be the first into the malls and stores when they open, and stampedes resulting in injuries are frequently reported. In sharp contrast to the day before, the roads are jammed with traffic heading towards the shopping malls.

Except for those who have visited America, the term Black Friday is mainly unknown in this country. Yet this year a number of online sales companies have declared this week to be Black Friday Deals Week.

Of course, the difference is that traffic is unaffected and no-one is going to be injured doing their shopping online!
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First Past The Post

The first Christmas card of this year’s festive season slid through our letter box yesterday morning, and very welcome it was too as it came from a chum with a great sense of humour.

We plan to post our own Christmas cards at the end of this week, just after Thanksgiving, and I thought that ours would be the first out this year. But my chum has beaten us to it.

I did wonder whether it would be a good idea to put a note in this year’s cards announcing that this would be the last year they would be sent and that a donation to charity would be made in future. But my wife, who is the arbiter of such matters, strongly disagrees as she likes the tradition. On the other hand, she smiles wryly when I point out that it is Yours Truly that has the job of writing them all out!

The first commercial Christmas card is considered to be that commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 at a cost of a shilling each. It is interesting to note that the cost of postage at that time was just one penny.

How things have changed. These days, the cost of postage is very often more than the cost of the cards themselves!
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