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Even though I was never in a store that was this bad, I used to go out and shop on Black Friday.

In fact, I was so wrapped up in Black Friday that I used to write about it right here on the blog. I wrote reviews of Black Friday dating back to 2008, 2006, 2005, and even way back in 2004. After 2008, I stopped going out on Black Friday. It was around that time when I really started planning to kick my student loan repayment into high gear. Plus, some time around 2008 is when the insanity of Black Friday shopping was reaching an apex. And if there were ever two good reasons to stay away from the big box stores and malls on Black Friday, then those are two really good reasons to stay at home.

Fast forward to 2013 and things are a little bit different. First, I no longer have the albatross of student loans weighing me down. Second, stores are now opening on Thanksgiving night to accommodate a portion of the traditional Black Friday crowd. And finally, so many consumers out there are struggling financially that the idea of spending all day shopping on Black Friday just doesn’t make good financial sense any more. It’s certainly a different world than back in 2008 when I last wrote a review of what I encountered on Black Friday. And since the world is a little bit different now than it was back in 2008 I decided to brave the stores on Thanksgiving weekend for the first time in years. This is what I found…

Thanksgiving Night Shopping
Around 11:00pm I decided to go shopping for two specific items. The items weren’t for my family since I finished Christmas shopping for them well before Thanksgiving. Instead, the items I was looking to purchase were for my church’s Christmas giving tree. If you’re not familiar with a giving tree, it’s where the less fortunate folks in a parish ask the church for help in providing their kids with a merry Christmas morning by helping them buy a few gifts. Within the program, though, there are restrictions. For example, at my church you need to be an active parishioner in order to participate in the program. In other words, you can’t just show up in November and say, “Hey, I need help buying gifts again this year.” Nope – ain’t going to happen.

I also have some personal rules that I follow for the Christmas giving tree program. One of those rules is that I don’t buy gift cards. Over the years, the number of tags on the giving tree that are asking for gift cards to Walmart, Target, Shoprite, and other retailers has grown exponentially. And if the purpose of the giving tree is to ensure that young kids wake up on Christmas morning with a few toys to play with under the tree, then I don’t see how a gift card gets a 6 year old boy or a 7 year old girl to that end. One of my other rules is that I tend to gravitate towards buying gifts for boys instead of girls. Something about going into a toy store and buying a Barbie or a princess play set doesn’t work for me. I couldn’t tell you why – it just doesn’t work. Perhaps my most important rule, though, is that I try to pick giving tree tags for younger kids. I understand that teenagers have as much need for a merry Christmas morning as the young ones, but the young ones have stronger memories of the “good times” during the Christmas season. Plus, at some point if you’re a parent and you’re asking for help getting your 15 or 16 year old kid some gifts for Christmas (and you’ve done so for the last 15 or 16 years), then you failed at some aspect of your life. And I know that is a presumptuous statement, but if you have a 15+ year track record of not being able to save a few buck each year so you can buy 3 or 4 nice things for your 15+ year old kids during Christmas, then I’m not interested in advancing your inability to plan ahead and live an irresponsible lifestyle.

So I stick with getting gifts for the little ones. Now back to the story…

This year, I picked two gift tags – one for a 7 year old boy and one for a 9 year old boy. They both wanted wrestling toys. One wanted a wrestling figure and the other wanted a wrestling ring: two very easy toys to pick up on Thanksgiving night after I left my family’s house. At some point around 11:00pm I went to the local K-Mart and they had all of the toys right there. Most importantly, though, they didn’t have an excessive amount of people in the parking lot or in the store. In fact, it looked like any other Thursday night in the store. I grabbed a few wrestling figures and the ring and headed for the checkout (I go a little bit above any beyond so when a kid asks for a wrestling ring, he gets a ring and two wrestling figures and when a kid asks for a single wrestling figure, he gets three). And the checkout is what stopped me in my tracks. After very publicly promoting that they’d be open all Thanksgiving Day and night, my local K-Mart had two cashiers working. TWO! Look, if you’re only going to put two cashiers on duty on what could have been one of the heaviest shopping nights of the year, then you’re better off not opening the store at all.

Each of the two checkout lines was about 15 people deep and everyone was pissed that the store decided to open without adequate coverage in the checkout lanes. After spending some time observing (I observe a lot when I’m in these stores), I realized that people with only a few items were checking out quicker at the courtesy desk. I quickly moved over to the courtesy desk, checked out, and left the K-Mart with my Christmas giving tree toys in hand (actually, they were in a bag). My next stop was JCPenney at the Monmouth Mall. Admittedly, this stop wasn’t for the giving tree, but rather JCPenney is one of the few stores where you can find really high quality big and tall clothing, so I stopped there to see what was on sale. I wound up buying a quarter zip sweater that was actually too big (I returned it the next day for the right size). Some of my observations about JCPenney include the fact that a lot of the Thursday night shoppers – and by “a lot” I mean at least 90% of the entire population that I saw in my area that night – were of specific ethnic or cultural descent. I’m not suggesting that 90% of the people in the stores were a single ethnicity or cultural identity – not at all. Instead, I’m saying that 90% of the entire population consisted of a diversity of people including first generation Mexican immigrants, Orthodox Jewish people, first and second generation Indian families, etc. If I had to suggest a single ethnicity that was more prevalent than the rest, then I’d say that the Hispanic population outpaced everyone else by leaps and bounds. Anyway, just a random observation that occurred to me while I was at JCPenney.

After my quick stop at JCPenney (I was in the store for a total of about 10 minutes), I headed to one of the habitually worst places to shop in Monmouth County – the Neptune Township Walmart. Honestly, folks, if you ever want to have a horrendous shopping experience, then go to the Neptune Walmart at any time of the day and try to order anything from the deli counter. If you get away from that deli counter in under 15 – 20 minutes, it would be record-breaking. Anyway, my purpose of going to this disaster area on Thanksgiving Night was to purchase the gift bags that my church requires you place your giving tree gifts in before you bring them to the church. And I have to admit – this wasn’t a big ordeal for me on Thanksgiving Night. I went into the store, grabbed the two gift bags, walked to the register and waited a split second while the person in front of my checked out, and then I checked out myself and left the store. As I left the store I was asked to show my receipt and my purchases (which were in my hand because I refused to take a plastic bag to put two paper gift bags in). My entire experience at the Neptune Walmart was not aggravating at all and that is pretty shocking considering that store’s atrocious history. I should comment, though, that I didn’t venture to the back of the store where the electronics department is located. I looked back there and it looked like Armageddon on earth, but I didn’t dare take a walk to that part of the store. No reason to ruin my shopping experience, you know?

And that was my Thanksgiving Night experience.

Black Friday
The only thing I did on Black Friday was head back to JCPenney to return and switch out the quarter-zip sweater that I purchased a few days earlier. There was a small line in the store, but it was fully acceptable. In fact, I have to salute the young woman who handled my switch request at the checkout counter. She ran into a series of problems trying to make the switch in the system and she kept asking for my patience, which I always give to a cashier (I always remember that the last thing they need is an angry me staring at them). And because I was so patient with this woman, she took an additional $10 off of my purchase which brought the item down from its original price of $45 to the sale price of $25 to the additional reduced price of $15. Not bad for a nice piece of winter clothing.

And that’s the whole of my shopping experience this Black Friday. The lessons learned include that shopping on Thanksgiving Night means less crowds and higher diversity of shoppers while the big department stores make returning items a very easy and even thankful process. Another lesson learned is that I’m thankful to have completed my shopping before Thanksgiving and via all-online stores. Overall, I was very pleased with this year’s shopping experience, though not pleased enough to make it a regular occurrence each year.

The only part of the season that I really looked forward to was going to church and going to my brother’s house for Christmas. If you want to count Thanksgiving as part of the holiday season, then I also looked forward to going to my Mom’s house for Thanksgiving, too.

However, there was one thing that made my eyes open wide and get really excited about the whole gift-giving part of Christmas. So, for your reading pleasure, here’s the brief story of the gift that caught my eye last winter and made my otherwise dreary holiday season pretty bright!

When you cut right down to it, I think that most of the people on this planet are nerds in one form or another. Sure, you might not have a pocket protector and yeah, you might not have glasses held together by masking tape, but chances are that there is something on this planet that you “geek out” over. When I suggest that you “geek out” over something, I’m talking about the type of reaction that you have when your favorite baseball team wins the World Series, when your favorite football team wins the Super Bowl, when you win your fantasy football league, etc. For some, it’s the type of reaction that you have when the extended editions of all three Lord of the Rings movies get released on Blu-Ray (with extras!).

Sometime last winter I was browsing around the internet and I came across a website with a simple name: Authentic Post Office Box Door Coin Banks. For the life of me, I can’t remember what brought me to that website. I think I was looking at a list on some website that talked about “cool gifts for men” or something like that – who knows? Anyway, I saw the coin bank fashioned from some wood and an old post office box door that was offered on this website and immediately I started geeking out over it. Go ahead, click over there and take a look and then come back and finish reading this post. I’ll wait…

Back? Did you go take a look? Good! It’s a pretty cool coin bank, right? Anyway, back to the story…

My family and I use Elfster.com for our Christmas shopping. It’s a good deal because you just post stuff that you want for Christmas and then your family buys it for you. Assuming everyone understands how the process works, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get exactly what you want for Christmas each year and you can even provide details on what customization that you want on your gifts. This year on Elfster the first gift I put on my Christmas list was the coin bank. I even left detailed instructions on which size coin bank I wanted and what number I wanted on the post office box door.

And last week on Christmas day, guess what I got?

How sweet is that? Come on! Look at the new coin bank as it stands next to the old plastic chocolate covered peanut jar that I’ve been using for the last few years:

There’s no comparison! And there’s the point of this update – that this coin bank, for some reason, makes me geek out and managed to bring some happiness to my otherwise “blech” holiday season. I don’t know why and I can’t explain it. I don’t know why I think this coin bank is the coolest thing ever. But when it caught my eye last winter, I bookmarked the page and said, “I need one of these things as soon as possible!”

If you have a guy in your family and you have no idea what to buy him for Christmas (or any holiday for that matter), then I strongly suggest getting him one of these coin banks. Maybe it’ll give him a geek out moment or a helping of the holiday spirit just like it gave me!

It’s Christmas time in New Jersey, come see and hear,
all the sights, sounds, glow and sparkling of lights so pretty
that comprise the heartbeat, rhythm and sparkle of our
big and wonderful and great cities, towns and villages throughout the garden state.

It’s Christmas time in New Jersey our cities, towns and villages,
are now all adorned in their most glorious dress,
as church elders prepare the baby Jesus creche.

Christmas trees on town halls, stores, homes, lawns and malls are all shining bright.
Gaily decorated in colored bells, tinsel, garlands, angels and lights, that glow and sparkle day and night,
boy oh boy what a magnificent and inspirational sight.

As Santa Clause makes out his Christmas list, making sure no girl or boys requested
toy will be forgot or missed. as Santa Claus extends his warm and welcoming cheerful Christmas
greeting to everyone throughout our great garden state.

Merry, Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to one and all.
For, it’s Christmas time in New Jersey.

© Joseph P. Martino – Poet, Writer – Millburn, NJ

We’re always thankful to have a great contribution like this from Mr. Martino. Feel free to share this entry with your friends!

The biggest problem that I ran into this year was finding a decent set of Christmas cards for my family. Specifically, finding a good Christmas card for my older brother was particularly annoying. I managed to luck out getting a card for my younger brother since he was born on Christmas and the dual Happy Birthday/Merry Christmas cards are pretty simple and don’t leave much room for awkward messages. But finding a card for my older brother was unbelievably annoying.

The problem wasn’t the design of the cards – I don’t care about that and I probably wouldn’t know a “good” looking card from a “bad” looking card anyway. The problem was the message written within these cards. Most of the messages read something like this:

Dear brother,

I know that we don’t particularly care for one another, but this is Christmas so why don’t you keep your bullshit to yourself and not ruin it? Okay? Great. Thanks.

Merry Christmas

Here’s the best part – I’m not even exaggerating that much with the message! Honestly, most of the brother-to-brother cards were within this vein. They either referenced an inner hatred and disgust of one brother to another or a history of muted emotions between the brothers. What type of messed up society do we live in that greeting cards for one of the happiest holidays of the year are reduced to anger-filled messages from one family member to another? It’s outrageous!

If I want to take jabs at family members, I’d rather just go to Bald Guy Greetings and get them a card from that website. At least they’d know that there was some humor behind the message – not just an angry message written by someone at Hallmark who is bitter because they come from a broken home.

This Christmas season I began looking for cards the day after Thanksgiving and wound up looking in two Hallmarks, a Walmart, a Target, Kohl’s, and K-Mart before I found a decent Christmas card for my older brother. And it wasn’t too much easier to find a nice card for my Mom, either. Most of the cards referenced how the son was a complete screw-up for most of their lives and it was only by the saving grace of their Mother that they are able to function in society today. Again, what type of maladjusted weirdos do the greeting card companies have working for them? Whatever happened to a simple “Merry Christmas” message? Or what about, “Merry Christmas, Mom. I hope you enjoy the day!” I mean is it that hard to take the anger and angst out of these messages?!

Anyway, I hope that this isn’t a widespread problem. Did you have any trouble getting Christmas cards this year? Here’s hoping that next year is a little bit less bitter for the greeting card companies!

It’s Christmas in New York City, come and experience
the sights, lights and sounds so pretty
That comprises the rhythm,beat and excitement of our
great big wonderful city.

It’s Christmas in New York City, now adorned in her Most glorious dress,
as church elders prepare the nativity scene and the Baby Jesus crèche.

Christmas trees displayed all over town adorned and decorated in
Gaily colored lights,bells,reefs and tinsel that glows and twinkle in anticipation of Kris Kringle

Sparkling brightly Day and night…boy oh boy what a magnificent sight.

Christmas tree stands gleaming bright and tall in department stores, promenades,plazas,malls, lawns, and homes.
In department stores all over town Santa is busy making his list for all the girls and boys presents and Christmas toys.

Saint Nick extends his warmest Christmas wishes to all who visit or call,
“Merry, Merry Christmas to one and all”… Here’s hoping, that on Christmas Day snow will fall.

Merry, Merry Christmas!
For, it’s Christmas in New York City.

And with that in mind, here is an update from the folks over at the Elk Candy Company regarding their availability to help you with your marzipan needs for this holiday season:

Woohooo!

We are busy making our marzipan.

The holidays are fast approaching, don’t forget to get your orders in. Thanksgiving is 3 weeks away!

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

Elk Candy Co.
Shop: www.elkcandy.com
Blog: blog.elkcandy.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ElkCandy
Twitter: www.twitter.com/ElkCandy

I don’t know about you all, but I’ll be getting myself some marzipan from the Elk Candy Company in the next few weeks. Not only does their marzipan make a great gift, but it’s the type of gift that you can treat yourself to and not really feel that guilty about it. I can’t wait!

Which brings us to today’s post. The entry below was originally prepared back in November 2009. My impetus for writing this one was the fact that the roads in New Jersey were packed with folks from other states who had no idea how to drive Garden State style! As you might imagine, dealing with horrible drivers got me pretty irate so I began writing this entry as a way of explaining how people should drive in New Jersey.

Before you read the entry below you should understand that there are half finished sentences and thoughts that just end without being completed (like the very first sentence). Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Driving during the holidays made me extremely angry really brought out the

Stop At A Stop Sign
The picture to the left is a stop sign. When you see one of these signs on a road that you are traveling on – STOP! Stopping is bringing your car to a complete stop. This does NOT mean that you can roll through the stop sign into on-coming traffic, especially if you are at a four way stop intersection.

The Middle Finger
If you see the picture to the left while you’re driving around New Jersey, chances are that you’ve fucked up and made someone driving near you very mad. In fact, there is a strong chance that you broke one of the rules that I’m sharing with you on this page. The image to the left shows what we call the Middle Finger. When someone gives you the Middle Finger, you should refocus your attention on the road and your driving skills and, if necessary, pull into the slow lane (see below) to let the professional drivers get to their destination without being aggravated by you and your ridiculously amateurish driving style.

The Fast Lane and The Slow Lane
You’ll notice in the picture to the left that there are two lanes on this highway. In New Jersey, the lane on the left is what we call the “Fast Lane” and the lane on the right is what we call the “Slow Lane.” When you’re driving in New Jersey, you’ll often see speed limit signs telling you what the suggested speed limit is for the road that you’re on. Note my use of the word “suggested” here. It is common in New Jersey for drivers accelerate between 5 and 10 miles per hour faster than the suggested speed limit. On the highways, you’ll often find people accelerating to greater speeds (none of which is condoned by JerseySmarts.com). However, if you find yourself driving in the left lane and you’re driving either at or below the speed limit, get in the right lane immediately! You’re blocking the professional drivers from using the left lane to drive a little bit faster than the speed limit and will likely cause yourself to receive the Middle Finger (see above).

Do Not Tailgate
You see this picture to the left? That’s the rear end of a car. When you’re driving in your car and you come upon this picture to the left (or a variation of it), you slow down and keep a distance. You do NOT pull the front end of your car within inches of the rear end of the person in front of your car. That would be an asshole move and will likely cause you to receive the Middle Finger (see above).

You know it’s funny. The more I read that half finished entry, the more I think that there was a lot of potential there. Oh well, maybe one day I’ll revisit this entry and actually complete it!

While we were beginning the conversation, I said to my Mom, “You know, I don’t really want anything. You don’t have to get anything for me.” And then my older brother jumped in right away and said, “Yeah, me neither. I don’t want anything.” And after that an entire conversation ensued about not purchasing gifts for anyone this year. Our rationale was that we each had different financial goals that we were reaching towards so spending a few hundred bucks (or, very likely, much more) on Christmas gifts that no one was really looking for would be a waste of otherwise scarce financial resources.

Frequent readers of this blog know what I was saving up for this fall/early winter. My older brother is in the process of saving money to buy a house with his fiancée, my younger brother is in the process of paying off a new truck that he bought, and my Mother is in the process of paying off her mortgage and some consumer debt. After having this conversation, we all decided that the best thing to do was to celebrate Christmas with family and friends and leave out the excessive spending on superfluous gifts.

So last Friday night, my Mom hosted our family and extended family for her annual Christmas party and it was a great time as always. Then on Saturday morning my older brother made breakfast and we enjoyed not spending a ton of money on otherwise unlooked for presents. Except for my younger brother, that is, who swore up and down that we left that conversation back in late October with the idea that we might not buy presents. Oh well – not a problem at all!

Leaving my Mom’s house with only a few items marked one of the better Christmases that I think I’ve had in a long time.