Holiday shopping changes with the times | THE MOM STOP

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that on Thanksgiving morning, I’d climb into bed with my mom with the morning newspaper and thumb through the Black Friday sales inserts while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. We’d go through the ads, store by store, and make a game plan for Black Friday — which stores we’d visit first, and which “doorbuster” sale items we had on our list.

Black Friday was an event.

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Years later, after I was married, I still pored through the Black Friday ads in the newspaper on Thanksgiving with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, only it was with my in-laws. Black Friday sales started to creep into Thanksgiving, and so my sister-in-law and I spent a few midnights on Thanksgiving going to Walmart for the start of their sales, or to Toys-R-Us, which was an event itself. Standing in line, waiting in anticipation, was sometimes better than the sale itself.

The internet has made a lot of things easier, and thus in the last decade I’ve done most of my Black Friday shopping online, from my phone. Only now “Black Friday” isn’t Friday or even Thanksgiving Day, but starts sometimes a week before Thanksgiving and continues on through Christmas. “Black Friday” used to symbolize the start of the holiday shopping season, but that designation has blurred, much like Christmas decorating often starts after Halloween.

Perhaps it’s due to a change in shopping patterns. Much like my kids rarely go into a store to shop, it’s easier these days to browse items from the sofa and put the items in an online shopping cart than to get out  in the dark and stand in line on a cold November morning to buy the same things that are discounted online. People aren’t used to going into stores to shop the way we used to.

Still, I miss the “event” of Black Friday. I miss the smell of newsprint in the morning and the ink on my fingers. I miss the planning, the anticipation. And I might even miss the sore feet from having to stand in lines.

This year was the first year I that I didn’t even bother looking at sale ads on Thanksgiving Day. My father-in-law, a longtime newspaper reader, didn’t even go out to get a newspaper. Instead, we stayed in front of a warm fireplace, curled up on the sofa with my kids while the turkey and casseroles cooked in the oven. We still watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, followed by a number of other movies, including our favorite, “Home Alone.”

But there were no game plans of stores or sales items. I’m honestly not even sure I shopped at all, as I already bought a few sales items in the days before.

Do I miss the Black Friday tradition? Yes. But am I willing to give up the coziness of my couch with my kids in exchange? Not likely.

There are many more ways to shop now days, whether it’s shopping in person, online, or doing in-store pickup. And change, even bittersweet, is not always such a bad thing.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at momstopcolumn@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Holiday shopping changes with the times | THE MOM STOP