Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Of Black Orchids and Black Friday~~~~



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.”

See its web site  www.blackorchidresort.com   Trip Advisor gave it 4 ½ stars out of 5.

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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