In the USA, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, the day that Christmas merchandise goes on sale for the first time. It’s a big thing, usually the highest dollar volume of sales for the year.

In Canada it obviously just  a crass copy-cat attempt to pry a little more money out of shoppers’ bank and credit card accounts. It has no relation whatsoever to anything in our calendar or culture. We celebrated Thanksgiving 46 days ago and Christmas merchandise has been on sale for several weeks already. Black Friday is a bizarre US import that should have been stopped at the border, much the way the province of Alberta goes all out to prevent Norway rats from crossing their border.

Here in Canada the coming weekend is Grey Cup weekend, the Canadian professional football championship. The actual game is on Sunday. I won’t be watching it, I have other things to do on a Sunday and I don’t own a TV anyway. Still, it would seem far less intrusive to me if retailers tried to profit from the excitement surrounding the Grey Cup by holding Grey Cup week sales.