I, Ronnie Follows, say:
It’s today and I am NOT going to say it. I am not joining in.
It isn’t an appropriate name (hereabouts).
I grant you that it may have some value as a Named Day elsewhere, but here, it is meaningless.
It started to be used a few years ago.
It was started by a famous person too – the very famous Miss Nomer. She is responsible for the use and the spread of that use. It didn’t take much either.
But why am I not joining in?
Is it not right that I should use this name? Am I not a child of the commercial age? A buyer and consumer of products? Are not the named days that I learned in former days enough?
Surely those names were enough (the ones from earlier days). They were from the days of previous credibilites – (the ones that weren’t commercialism) – the days of experiences used to educate.
So, why do I object to the new name, and not to the old names?
The old names remind us of the good; the needlessly sacrificial; the holy; the sacred; the fair; the strife for better. The old names celebrate things that were done, held dear in the hope that the whole of humanity might benefit.
The old names celebrate the progress cerebral: the moving from a state of ignorance toward a greater understanding; towards a shared personal development; towards an examination of collective conscience; towards a communal acceptance of goodness; towards a community acceptance and practice of kindness; towards a building of the community improved; towards a personal acceptance of a role in collective responsibility; towards a day of better for all; towards a goodness invincible for everything and everybody.
The new name excludes. It provides neither aspiration nor lesson. It shows itself in its colours. It is The Day cynical.
But it is where we are when we subscribe.
There are many calendars in the world. Those calendars are filled with every effort to encourage humanity to learn and remember to aspire, improve, learn, and take heed of history; to advocate and practise fairness and to change from the raw state.
I don’t remember cynical commercialism being a part of that lesson, no matter what – no matter whose – calendar.
I could say that Sunday for some is Advent. No? Doesn’t mean anything? Time of penance? Mean anything? No? Nothing? Well I don’t say it then. But then again, what price any validity? Well apparently 50% of normal, but only for today.
Never mind, eh?
Buy early (by yearly) it seems
Yours cynically,
Rhett O’Rick
voxturturis 
Though I don’t “get” everything you assert here, I do agree with you about the useless purpose of changing names to suit commercialism. Yes we know, in the black means lots of dollar signs ringing up in silver registers nation-wide. Globally, too. So the mega-stores get more millions, simply like adding powdered sugar to one’s brownie cake. (The sugar melts faster than granulated, mind you, just like those gargantuan price drops for “A Day”.) But just to make sure we don’t stash away our cash after a mere named Friday, we must be poised with coins to help “Mom and Pop Shops” (Like there is anything left after the great giant splurge one caves into doing after they read that 75% is taken-off on everything in the those super stores-including long-johns and your billionth pair of socks you really don’t need.
I don’t know for sure, but I think it is not really the name change completely, it is a latent resistance to being told you are supposed to get your overcoat on and brave the elements, so you can stand in line with a bunch of other people, shuffling along until you whip- out your plastic. If it weren’t a designated, re-named day, you might not even blink to think , “Oh hey, I am going to miss out on some real deals if I don’t get going and join the mayhem. And yes, there always is MAYHEM. The evil in our fellow cows comes down to crawls and brawls literally over tabletops often sporting neckties and briefs on sale for heaven’s sake! I mean really? But the underlying worst of it, which is what I think you meant when you started out to write this blog, is that you don’t like another dimension of people control; this one now being our vocabulary. I don’t either. This is why I refuse to say “Happy Holidays”, and insert what I believe to be the big Cahuna of holidays coming up, Christmas. So I say “Merry Christmas”. And I also say “Thank you, kindly”, not “Thanks”- in a singular snap of syllable. To tell you the truth, if I could name the day after Thanksgiving, the worldwide onslaught of “shopping season”, I would call it, “We should all be home not moving gluttony from dinner table to department store shelves day.” But that is wayyy too long.
If we truly are thankful, our wallets ought to be the last thing in the palm of our hands. Why not put into practice (the day after), the spoken word we heard at the proverbial holiday supper? Put in your palm, the hand of an elderly old one, a cherubic child–or even a naughty one, too, a fine book, a fountain pen, a paint brush, a a violin bow, and here’s a thought: a Bible. Why not don the hiking shoes and go discover the free visuals and sounds at everyone’s disposal? Or take your tennises and just go for a stroll. Or roll with the bike- to race across the ultimate gratitudinal line? Not like those things? Then fold your hands, close your eyes and dream of what you would hate to lose tomorrow. Name for this day? Don’t know. It is up to you. (So the Good Book says).
Well I agree with you; and you paraphrased my rant so well…
What is remarkable is that you are able to give me a (the only) reason for the name give to this day. I think if it were aimed at “Mom and Pop” or single owner/sole proprietor stores, I might be happier to fall in with the idea.
“Black” then for “Black Friday” is an old term, and a banker’s term, and it really means “Let’s Make Friday back into the Black”. Thus my ignorance is no more as to why the term is.
But it is relevant in America, but not in the UK. It is the Friday after Thanksgiving; but here we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving! The nearest feast is St. Andrew’s Day, November 30th, and that – unlike Thanksgiving – is not a moveable feast.
I don’t like the usurpation of the season by trying to get us all to say “Holidays”. “Happy Holidays” is said here in the UK when people go on holiday, or vacation; the term “vacation” or “vac” being confined to University use. (But even then, it is prefixed by “Christmas” or “Summer” and so on).
I’m going to write a little article on how to say “Thank you” – and I like your rebuttal of the shortened version.
Your last thoughts are kind, and they show what we might possibly gain and not lose by becoming more human. Yes, I like those ideas. And the name for the day? – “Tomorrow”. That should suit everybody!
tennises…as in tennis shoes or sneakers…. or trainers.
Tomorrow, huh. Has a fresh ring to it. Your piece was really good, because at first I was hung up on things like I don’t know who Rhett O’Rick is…must be a British personage or something, (I thought). (Oh, and there IS such a “person” who has a journal and is on Twitter. But then shazam, it hit me Rhetoric! CLEVER! I caught the Miss Nomer right away, whom I am sure often brunches with Sir O. (you know who). But kidding aside, I liked the stringent word use because it forced me to think what you, the author truly wants. This is an ingenious tool. I will try it out sometime. It’ll my loquaiousness a run for the money.
Tomorrow or Today, either would do; one of course representing potential and the other representing the immediate. Did you work out who “Ronnie Follows” is??
No! I am sadly unimaginative on this one.
Oh and I have no idea why I used the word stringent there. Must be the three a.m. brain doing its not so efficient thing. And as far as Ronnie Follows, all I get is Running fall lows? That I don’t get.