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    fortheloveofbeetsRebecca "Burt" Rose
    12/01/14 11:20am

    Can we just go back to celebrating Christmas by just giving each other oranges and sweets and hand-knit socks? Seriously, enough with the expensive gifts and the tremendous waste (SO MUCH WRAPPING PAPER) and the consumerism. The bit in the Kirk Cameron movie preview where he defends holiday materialism as something Jesus would have wanted really put me over the edge. It is just TOO MUCH.

    (Side note: I really hope that the Black Friday #notonedime protest was responsible for at least some of the drop.)

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      fortheloveofbeetsfortheloveofbeets
      12/01/14 11:36am

      http://jezebel.com/kirk-camerons-…:

      "Materialism is actually a fascinating concept. The eternal God took on a material body, something we can touch and see. That's a miracle! And so it's right that our Christmas isn't just some religious idea in our heads and in our hearts that we think about and get goosebumps over. It should be able to download into the world in the form of things that we can look upon and touch with our hands. Like gifts for those who love us."

      Don't mind me, I'm just choking to death on some gingerbread cookies, watching Kirk Cameron defend materialism in the name of one of the world historical figures most famous for renouncing it.

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      isner-mahutfortheloveofbeets
      12/01/14 11:38am

      As someone who is currently knitting a Christmas present, let me tell you that it isn't really cheaper or less consumer-y. Yarn stores/websites can suck you in and refuse to let you out, and that's not even getting in to needles or stitch counters or what-have-yous.

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    pizzaqueen91Rebecca "Burt" Rose
    12/01/14 11:16am

    Mark my words, that drop in sales was no accident this year. #notonedime

    I honestly believe the people made a difference.

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      Tequila Mockingbirdpizzaqueen91
      12/01/14 11:33am

      Yes, and I believe that it will be ignored in the news, since telling people that economic boycotts work is not in the interest of capitalism. I boycotted all weekend.

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      reindeerbanditpizzaqueen91
      12/01/14 11:41am

      GOOD! I hope it hit hard and I hope it hurts. I don't have much optimism left in me most days, but I've scrounged up some for this movement.

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    EldritchRebecca "Burt" Rose
    12/01/14 11:51am

    My family doesn't do Black Friday usually but I did brave a Barnes & Noble to get a signed Neil Gaiman book. The store was practically empty.

    My father's TV broke a week ago and he had to go to Best But to pick out a new one (but the warranty, holy shit it works!) and they had all the Black Friday deals out on Wednesday afternoon and a totally empty store. He picked out a top of the line TV for the Black Friday price. They had piles of them everywhere. No idea why anyone would kill themselves to go Thanksgiving evening if the deals are out in an empty store on Wednesday.

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      Nihongo Hanashimasen.Eldritch
      12/01/14 12:03pm

      Which book?

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      EldritchNihongo Hanashimasen.
      12/01/14 12:45pm

      American Gods. I already own it but this one is SIGNED.

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    Cheeseburger SlutRebecca "Burt" Rose
    12/01/14 11:41am

    Hopefully consumers realize that most Black Friday deals are bullshit - that 42 inch flatscreen has bogus specs and only 1 HDMI cord, those door busters are worth $10 tops, that sweater was marked up last week only to be brought back to it's original for Black Friday, etc...

    I'm a retail store manager and we had a scary day on Friday. My store doesn't do big business on black Friday as a rule, and this year was no different in that regard. But there was a shooting scare. We were locked in our back room with crying customers and no exit. Turns out it was just a fight with furniture thrown and glass broken (supposedly but I'm pretty sure I know what gunshots sound like)

    Anyway there was a panicked stampede at the mall and in some stores, like Apple, employees were injured and trampled (not to mention people seized the opportunity to shoplift). It was so scary suddenly seeing all the shoppers in the hall start running and screaming past your doors.

    Off topic, but my main thesis is : fuck Black Friday and fuck retail.

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      serendous sCheeseburger Slut
      12/01/14 11:59am

      I get the side-eye every time I explain this to someone. Black Friday is a good way to get rid of stock, especially older electronics, you're not really getting a deal that's worth standing in line for. Certainly nothing worth getting hit with a chair for. Yeesh!

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      JujyMonkey: Clever tagline goes hereCheeseburger Slut
      12/01/14 12:07pm

      Sorry that you had such a terrible experience! Curious why your store doesn't show a surge on BF?

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    LooselipssinksshipsRebecca "Burt" Rose
    12/01/14 12:31pm

    As an Atheist (born NOI Muslim turned evangelical Christian) I have to admit I have no fucking clue how to do Christmas. For a few years after college I did the tree and Christmas music thing, because well, I didn't have any other ideas. But this year I don't even want to do that. My gf and I (oh I didn't mention I'm a lesbian, lol) are flirting with the idea of just going away for the weekend and not doing gifts at all (except for my youngest brother because well, he's still young and I think it'd be lame not to).

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      mazzieDLooselipssinksships
      12/01/14 3:08pm

      I'm Jewish and I kind of love Christmas. I love indie christmas albums (She & Him, Sufjan Stevens), I love getting people gifts, I love the food and the movies (well just Nightmare Before Christmas), I love the decor (particularly my recent discovery of Krampuskarten https://atticexplorers.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/kra…), all of it. Last year, we went to my boyfriend's family's place but it is a long way to travel so he announced this year that we were going to stay here. I think my plan will be to cook a fancy dinner, have a nice meal and some nice with the bf and another friend of ours staying in town, exchange gifts, and play board games. I figure, we're saving hundreds of dollars by not traveling, so we can get a bit extra fancy on the food and the wine.

      I say, make some mulled wine, curl up with your girlfriend, do any activity you both enjoy and just take pleasure in being together. Greeting from the Krampus!

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      LooselipssinksshipsmazzieD
      12/01/14 6:27pm

      love that idea! It's festive and marks the day without doing Christmas per se. My struggle is just that this period of time was always marked as an event and it just doesn't feel right to not do something even though I don't believe in Jesus and would feel weird trying to put together some sort of Solstice ceremony/celebration (which trust me I totally thought about it).

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    Meander061Rebecca "Burt" Rose
    12/01/14 11:23am

    Basically - if they had all closed early on Wednesday and stayed closed on Thursday, the savings in payroll and energy would have made them all that much more profitable.

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      ChumtheburnerRebecca "Burt" Rose
      12/01/14 11:39am

      I've been at my particular store two and a half years (so two Black Fridays, or "Beloved Friday" as our district manager calls it) and the difference between this year and last was astronomical. Last year? Fitting room lines out the door and across the store, we had multiple attendants passing out cupcakes and candy, keeping them happy. The store was so full you could barely cross from one end to the other with an arm full of clothes.

      This year there was never a line for the fitting room and I brought full rolling racks of restock across the store several times. There was a line at the cash register but that's the holidays for you. Kind of depressing when you consider that this is our biggest day of the year and it impacts the hours that we small employees get.

      I do wonder if it's the economy or #notonedime, considering that I live and work in a very rich, fairly conservative by demographic, area.

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        pdxwhyChumtheburner
        12/01/14 3:08pm

        I think that it is BOTH. Honestly, the recovery is back to the same old unequal crap ( this is why all the protests for higher minimum wages and such) and a lot Americans have had simply enough of bs and brutality. It seems this country only worships money and this is the only way to get any sort of attention.

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      TGRIPRebecca "Burt" Rose
      12/01/14 12:53pm

      Firstly, no, I didn't buy a single thing on Black Friday itself. I did buy a Kinect game for 50% on Saturday, but... Target was doing it, Gamestop was doing it, hell Microsoft was doing it. That particular deal was omnipresent.

      Second, I found out that the best deals are actually on December 26th. So you'll know where my callous self will be that day.

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        Global BeetRebecca "Burt" Rose
        12/01/14 11:30am

        This makes me happy. I was planning on going out to buy a computer but heard about the not one dime hashtag and decided not to. I doubt this will make a difference but at least people are paying attention.

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          DashleyinCaliGlobal Beet
          12/01/14 12:37pm

          Similar story for me. I wasn't planning on doing any holiday shopping this weekend anyway, but when I was out and about, I reminded myself about the protest a couple of times and managed to avoid spending money at any retail stores.

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        serendous sRebecca "Burt" Rose
        12/01/14 12:05pm

        I'd like to chalk it up to #notonedime but I also think people are just really burned out on Christmas Creep. We went from stores opening at midnight to opening at 6pm on Thanksgiving and from Christmas decorations popping up in early November to showing up the week before Halloween. It's just too much and people are hopefully realizing that it's more fun to stay home and digest turkey than stand in line for last year's TVs. Not to mention the inevitable trampling and fighting that always seems to happen and the fact that, though the economy is better, it hasn't fully recovered and people don't have the cash to blow on random shit they could buy any time. I do feel sorry for the employees, though, since I know some retailers will use the lowered sales as an excuse to lay people off/cut hours.

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