I Just Dug Through Walmart’s Black Friday Announcement, and Nothing Means Anything Anymore

My late father-in-law used to make the same joke every year near the end of Thanksgiving dinner.

He’d turn to my wife and say: “O.K., honey. Ready? You and me. Black Friday sales start at midnight. I’ll get the car ready.”

This was funny because my father-in-law would have been the last person on the planet who would ever consider lining up outside a big-box retailer in the middle of the night to save money on a television the next morning.

My wife would be the second-to-last.

Come to think of it, he lived on a mountain in New Hampshire where the closest Walmart or other big store was a bit of a drive, which was either cause or effect of that disinclination.

Understanding Black Friday

I thought about this nice memory when I took a good look at how Walmart has been handling Black Friday this year.

If you’re reading this on Thanksgiving, in one sense you’re already late to the game. Because even though Thanksgiving is on Thursday, and Black Friday, as one would imagine, is on Friday, Walmart made its big announcement last month that things would actually start on a Monday.

Actually, two Mondays:

• Monday, November 11, was the start of what Walmart called Event One, with discounts starting online for paid Walmart+ subscribers—and extended to all customers in stores on November 15.
• Then, this past Monday was the start of what Walmart called Event Two, with discounts again starting online for paid Walmart+ subscribers—and extending to the rest of humanity in stores starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow.

Does nothing make sense anymore?

Walmart isn’t alone in this, of course, and it’s not the first year. In fact, we’ve sort of got a years-long arms race going on among big retailers reaching back farther and more and more online.

For example, Amazon has Black Friday Week—which actually started last Thursday. Target’s deals started on November 21 as well, although the company also designates Black Friday sales starting tomorrow and lasting through the weekend.

A shopper’s perspective

It says something about me that I’m getting a bit wistful about the very idea of Black Friday sales, despite taking after my father-in-law and my wife in the sense that you’re unlikely ever to find me braving the aisles at Walmart or the like on the day after Thanksgiving.

That said, I appreciate that we’re in the minority. The National Retail Federation expects 131.7 million people to shop on Black Friday itself this year, and 183.4 million people to shop between Thanksgiving and the following Monday.

That’s slightly up from last year’s 182 million, but way up from the pre-pandemic high of 165.3 million people in 2019.

If you dig into the data, it becomes clear that the more gray hair you have, the less likely you are to be eager to shop on Black Friday.

As Phil Rist, an executive at the firm that created the NRF survey, put it:

Younger shoppers are most likely to take advantage of Thanksgiving weekend deals this year, with 89 percent of young adults between 18 and 24 planning to shop over the weekend.

The social aspect of holiday shopping is also enticing to this age group, and they are most likely to shop because it’s a group activity that can be enjoyed with friends and family (20 percent).

Let’s just say it’s been a while since I was in the 18-to-24 age group.

Tradition remixed

The very idea of Black Friday supposedly has its roots in the notion that this was the time of the year when, thanks to holiday shopping, retailers would finally turn a profit, going from the red to the black.

So, enjoy your Thanksgiving, and if stimulating the economy is your thing on the day afterward, you have our gratitude.

See you on Cyber Monday, assuming that’s still next week.

Update: Of course, it’s not. Walmart’s deals start on Sunday.