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Naturally, thanksgiving marked the official start to the holiday seasons and the countdown to the end of the year.
The trees are drizzled with fairy lights and every store is trying their best to lure everyone in with huge savings (or so they claim) and generally encouraging spending beyond a sane level.
Now NY is pretty much populated all year around, but it seems as the holidays (yes, for political correctness, we are not allow to say Christmas, or rather, you have to also include Hanukkah, and other religious holidays around this time of the year) drew near, it just seems to get more and more congested on the streets, in the subway, in the line to the cashier in the shops.
Christmas markets have been setup around town in various parks. Merchandises range from the usual home ware, jewelry, clothing to very imaginative art and hand crafts.
A couple of weekends ago, I went to the markets at Union Square and Bryant Park and they were a lot of fun to see and let me tell you, every place has its own real Christmas tree, all decked out with fairy lights and fantastic decorations.
That’s another thing – it is actually common to find people buying a real pine tree to put up at home. I don’t know what the art of choosing the right tree is, but I know it is a big deal when it comes to choosing the tree to go up in front of the Rockefeller Center. Apparently every year, helicopters fly all over the country and they select “the tree” from someone’s backyard (well in reality I think it is more likely from a tree farm of sort) and ship it from where ever it is all the way back to NY to hoist up in front of the Rockefeller Center.
After spending Christmas in shorts and t-shirts for so many years, I thought I would get a White Christmas this time, but NY is actually not all that cold at the moment and we hadn’t had any snow so far. At least it is winter and I can put on my scarf and coat and order a steamy hot cup of gingerbread latte at Starbucks (not the best tasting coffee in the world but it will do).
The last 2 months came and gone in a flash! Can’t believe it is almost the end of the year?!?
After spending 2 weeks back home in Australia, I came back to NY, just at the end of Autumn and experienced Thanksgiving first hand.
It is certainly a much bigger affair than Christmas makes out to be here (well little kids may argue otherwise on that point, but if I go with the amount of vacation days you get, Thanksgiving definitely seems more celebrated). This is also how I experienced what is called “Black Friday” shopping.
Black Friday is the day that follows Thanksgiving, which is always the last Thursday in November. From the sounds of it, serious shoppers plan towards this specific Friday to do all their bargain hunting. This is the equivalent of our Myer Stocktaking sales after Christmas, only much MUCH more spectacular and crazy!!
Usually there are items available for 30% of its usual price (or less) and whilst most shops open up at around 5am in the morning, this year the famous Woodbury Common outlet opened from midnight. I heard that by 5am, the shops were looking decidedly more like stalls at a local flea market and it takes upwards of 1.5hrs to get through the line to the cashier!I did get up at 5am and did go to a shop to see what the fuss was all about and I found that there were techniques to this Black Friday shopping – Just like the Myer stocktake sales, it is all advertisement, the store probably carries like 3 of those 90% off items where you have to fight the other 50 people in the line for; and the bargain items are usually not stocked up on shelves but left at front table near the cashier. Whilst I didn’t manage to get what I wanted getting up at 5am, persistent also helped. It seems that certain stores, more hidden and less frequent would be a bargain hunter’s best bet, especially for chain store. I was after this external storage and when it was sold out everywhere else I visited in Queens and downtown Manhattan, I ended up finding 3 available in a branch of that store in midtown, possibly forgotten by most as it is between some office buildings with some scaffolding work in front of it. Yeessssssss!
