Results tagged “Thanksgiving” from The Morning After

Thanksgiving is one of the last major holidays still standing that remains to be compromised by the American consumer spirit. It's not about buying expensive gadgets, skimpy costumes or lush roses. It's what a holiday should be: family, togetherness, food and, of course, giving thanks. And sure, that's nice and all. But it does nothing to whet our appetite to spend money we don't have on things we don't need for people we don't even like. Enter Black Friday. No, it's not the stock market plunging again at record levels; it's the shamelessly consumerist holiday for a shamelessly consumerist nation. With this holiday of holidays less than a day away, we can give our thanks to it by learning more about it. Here are three things you probably didn't know about Black Friday.

1. "Black Friday" was originally about Philadelphia's traffic woes

The earliest known mention of the term "Black Friday" as the unofficial start of Christmas shopping season was made in 1966 by Martin L. Apfelbaum, the executive vice president of Earl P.L. Apfelbaum's, Inc. In a January column, he wrote:

"Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day...it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing.

The Associated Press quoted a Philadelphia sales manager in 1975 as saying, on the name given to the day by cab and bus drivers, "They think in terms of headaches it gives them."

A New York Times article from the same year also credits the public transportation drivers in the City of Brotherly Love for naming "the day between Thanksgiving and the Army-Navy game.

2. Merchants tried to put on a positive spin

Retailers in the early 1980s weren't pleased with the negative connotation that comes with "Black Friday." After all, it has consistently been one of their most profitable days. Looking for a positive connotation for the word "black," they turned to accounting practices.

Although major outfits like Walmart and Target are immune from this necessity, traditionally retailers operate at a loss throughout the year, hoping to come out ahead with Black Friday profits. Those profits, if all goes well, make a merchant no longer "in the red" but instead "in the black." Indeed, the quarter including Christmas is often a retailer's only profitable one, according to SEC filings.

3. For three years, it came after the ill-fated "Franksgiving"

Still in the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt aimed to boost retail sales from 1939 to 1941 by moving the date of Thanksgiving from the last Thursday in November to the second-to-last. But most Americans weren't happy with the decision to lengthen the shopping season, especially because the proclamation was made only one month prior to Thanksgiving.

The holiday became fragmented nationwide. The first year, only 23 states observed on the early date, and 22 observed on the traditional date. The remaining five celebrated both Thanksgiving Days. Because Democrats favored Roosevelt's move more, there was said to be a Democrat Thanksgiving and a Republican Thanksgiving. In December of 1941, Congress finally pulled the plug on Franksgiving by establishing Thanksgiving Day as the fourth Thursday in November.

With less than a week to go before the nation's turkeys stop gobbling and the nation's people start, the same question is on every American's mind. Whether we like it or not, our culture won't let us escape it: What are we thankful for? Aside from some of the basics--food on our tables, a roof over our heads, the end of a two year election season--the past week and a half have brought three medical breakthroughs that should have all of us feeling thankful.

Nov. 12
News broke that an American HIV patient living in Berlin has been living infection-free for 20 months following a bone marrow stem cell transplant used to treat his leukemia. Although they cannot promise that the man has no trace of the virus, doctors said they have been unable to detect it.

This probably won't ever become a standard treatment for HIV--this patient's leukemia provided a unique opportunity--but it does suggest the possibility that AIDS can be cured in the foreseeable future with stem cells, a huge step for the 33.2 million people infected worldwide, especially the 68% of them living in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nov. 19
A Colombian woman living in Spain had suffered damage to her windpipe from tuberculosis. Doctors worried that she would have to lose one lung if it wasn't repaired in time. The operation necessary to replace the damaged section is typically very dangerous. But this procedure was different. A donor provided a trachea that doctors used to engineer a windpipe fashioned out of the recipient's own stem cells. Four months later she is healthy and, unlike most transplant patients, needs no anti-rejection medication.

This too speaks to the future of stem cell treatments. It suggests that, also in the foreseeable future, people with organs damaged beyond repair will no longer have to wait on a list for a donor, to take expensive drugs everyday for the rest of their lives. Science fiction will become reality, and we will be able to grow our own replacement organs.

Nov. 20
An American being treated in Florida survived for 4 months with an artificial heart before she received a donated heart. The two pumps that comprised the man-made device are typically used to supplement the heart and assist its functioning. Doctors said that young woman's case is "a big deal" and "pretty amazing."

Although the pumps didn't completely restore the patient's quality of life--she fought off infection almost constantly--they did give her 118 days to locate a donor that she may not have had otherwise. With the constant advances being made, we can only expect artificial organs to get more and more efficient as time and research goes on.