Hello Dear Darklings,
Thanksgiving is almost upon us and we have in my home and
with my family a lot to be thankful for.
Sis and I have most of the goodies for the table purchased,
friends and family are also bringing other goodies to add, and I have lots of
aluminum pans to put in left overs to give to people afterwards.
Our house guests, Mr. & Mrs. Rodgers have settled in
nicely, Mr. Rodgers loves taking the dogs for their walks and talking to the
neighbors, Mrs. Rodgers has started crocheting comforters, slippers socks, and
mittens as gifts. And they have found
places that they enjoy going to. Mrs.
Rodgers said to me that she enjoys the quiet pace of my house, even when I have
the Merry Maids come in to do dusting and such and with my part time house
keeper Betty who comes in to help with heavy work like the laundry and making
beds.
Today it will be getting down the special dish and glass
ware as well as the pots and pans used for the holiday dinners.
I have only found a few things Gothicly and I have to
credit the “Dear Darkling” newsletter (www.deardarkling.com)
for showing morbid edible candies and Gothic clothing for the toddlers as well
as writing materials from pens to notebooks to help you write things grim and
dark to make E.A. Poe proud of you.
So I decided to do a word combination just for fun to see
what I could find that’s matches that and is sort of Gothicly, the most popular combination is “Black
Orchid”
For example there is Black Orchid Denim at
blackorchiddenim.com I’m not in favor of
ripped leggings or jeans but some of their tops are very nice for casual wear
if one wants to make a statement subtly.
Then there is Tom Ford’s Black Orchid cologne and perfume, according to its Hype “This is not about an
ordinary orchid….a little more strange and rare.” It’s floral-spicy with patchouli and
sandalwood, amber and balsam and hint of incense.
Then there is the Black Orchid Resort in Belize. According to it’s website “Located in the heart of Belize on the
outskirts of Burrell Boom Village, the Black Orchid Resort is an oasis of
modern convenience in an exotic tropical rainforest setting. Just 15 minutes
away from the Philip Goldson International Airport in Belize City, the Black
Orchid Resort is worlds away with 16 comfortable rooms, 7 luxury suites, &
two well-appointed villas.”
Then there is ILNP Black Orchid nail polish, a high quality
lacquer, cruelty free and vegan with sparkle, you can see it and buy it on
Amazon.com
And odd thing is a fish called a Betta, we use to call them
“fighting fish” as they don’t seem to get along and can be aggressive to other
fish so they need to be in their own but they have developed one called a Black
Orchid.
You see where I’m going on this and that’s to not eliminate the
actual black orchids that can be found in Belize (it’s national flower), Madagascar, Ecuador and the Dracula vampira orchid
on the slopes of Mount Pichincha in Ecuador as well as Dracula anthracina (the
coal-black Dracula), a species of orchid from Colombia. Many
are too rare to have in the U.S. so that
is why I lean towards the deep purple cymbidiums to get my “Drac” fix.
But now we also have that Dreaded Black Friday, the day
after Thanksgiving shopping frenzy. My
niece Coralline asked me where did that term come from?
Well I can thank
Sarah Pruitt who wrote an article
on November 24, 2015 at www.history.com
for her story which I’ll re-print here but also will give you the direct link
to it http://www.history.com/news/whats-the-real-history-of-black-friday
Here is Ms. Pruitt’s “What’s the Real History of Black Friday”
article:
It makes sense that
the term “Black Friday” might refer to the single day of the year when retail
companies finally go “into the black” (i.e. make a profit). The day after
Thanksgiving is, of course, when crowds of turkey-stuffed shoppers descend on
stores all over the country to take advantage of the season’s biggest holiday
bargains. But the real story behind Black Friday is a bit more complicated—and
darker—than that.
The first recorded use
of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to holiday shopping but to financial
crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869.
Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked
together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive
the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in
September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into
free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.
The most commonly
repeated story behind the post-Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday
tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of
operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went
into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew
so much money on discounted merchandise. Though it’s true that retail companies
used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is
the officially sanctioned—but inaccurate—story behind the tradition.
In recent years,
another myth has surfaced that gives a particularly ugly twist to the
tradition, claiming that back in the 1800s Southern plantation owners could buy
slaves at a discount on the day after Thanksgiving. Though this version of Black Friday’s roots has understandably led some
to call for a boycott of the retail holiday, it has no basis in fact.
The true story behind
Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe.
Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe
the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban
shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy
football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would Philly cops not
be able to take the day off, but they would have to work extra-long shifts
dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters would also take
advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, adding to the
law enforcement headache.
By 1961, “Black
Friday” had caught on in Philadelphia, to the extent that the city’s merchants
and boosters tried unsuccessfully to change it to “Big Friday” in order to
remove the negative connotations. The term didn’t spread to the rest of the
country until much later, however, and as recently as 1985 it wasn’t in common
use nationwide. Sometime in the late 1980s, however, retailers found a way to
reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively,
rather than negatively, on them and their customers. The result was the “red to
black” concept of the holiday mentioned earlier, and the notion that the day
after Thanksgiving marked the occasion when America’s stores finally turned a
profit. (In fact, stores traditionally see bigger sales on the Saturday before
Christmas.)
The Black Friday story
stuck, and pretty soon the term’s darker roots in Philadelphia were largely
forgotten. Since then, the one-day sales bonanza has morphed into a four-day
event, and spawned other “retail holidays” such as Small Business
Saturday/Sunday and Cyber Monday. Stores started opening earlier and earlier on
that Friday, and now the most dedicated shoppers can head out right after their
Thanksgiving meal. According to a pre-holiday survey this year by the National
Retail Federation, an estimated 135.8 million Americans definitely plan to shop
over the Thanksgiving weekend (58.7 percent of those surveyed), though even
more (183.8 million, or 79.6 percent) said they would or might take advantage
of the online deals offered on Cyber Monday.
Well for us we will use the Friday after Thanksgiving to put
away and straighten up after the Thanksgiving feast and use that day and the
weekend to start decorating for Christmas,
YES Dear Darklings we wait until Santa shows up at the end of the Macy’s
Day parade. And there is one thing that
we do in my house after the feast when everyone is having their turkey tryptophan
slumber I put on “Miracle on 34th Street” I’ve often felt it was the perfect transition
movie from Thanksgiving to the Christmas season.
Just as a trivia note the Macy’s parade that is shown in the
movie is the one from 1946, when it was first televised on those early black
and white T.V.’s.
Happy Thanksgiving Darklings
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