As the Christmas season begins, stores become wild jungles with crazed crowds.

‘Tis the season for holiday shopping! With Thanksgiving out of the way, the gates are open for the crazy holiday shopping season. Stores are decking the halls with once-a-year kind of sales. With all the attraction of saving, what’s stopping shoppers from breaking the bank?

The two events that spark the beginning of the Holiday spending craze are Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Black Friday can be described as chaotic. According to an article, BlackFriday.com the term “Black Friday” began in the 1960’s when store sales went from “red” to “black”.  The “red” signifies the loss in profit, while the “black” signifies the gain in profit.

Cyber Monday lies on the Monday after Thanksgiving and online retailers claim that some of their best sales happen then. Cyber Monday in the United States inspired countries around the world to join in the phenomenon a few years later. It has become an international marketing term for all these countries. Since 2006, the online sales have grown immensely, ranging from $610 -$1,735 million.

With these two events signifying the beginning of Holiday spending, market profits’ rise and household balances’ decline.

With so many deals and sales, many shoppers ask themselves: “How much do I spend?”
Where Does The Dough Go?

Holiday budgeting has become a large part of the holiday shopping season in order to determine what families, parents, etc. can spend without their accounts dwindling.

Local mother of four Susie Ringhofer said she does in fact budget her spending for the season. Her family does it, ‘“the old fashion way…in our heads!”

For many, this method is sufficient. These shoppers have holiday shopping, as it seems, down to a science from years of experience.

MarketingForcast.com reported that for this holiday season, the number of consumers who will spend between $500 and $5,000 has jumped from 40 percent to 50 percent. This is a stark contrast to the spending of previous years.

The average budget for holiday giving is about $1,014. To keep a rein on spending, about 52 percent of women and 48 percent of men plan their budgets.

Whether you plan or take the old fashion route, sales have a considerable impact on spending. During the Christmas season who can resist Black Friday and Cyber Monday? The deals are just too tempting.

“Yes, I see Cyber Monday as beneficial to our budget,” Ringhofer said. “There are usually significant discounts and free shipping offered, allowing us to stay within our holiday budget.”

While Ringhofer did say she goes out two or three times during the holiday season to do her Christmas shopping, she prefers to stay in the comfort of her home to “…avoid the crazy crowds at the mall!!”

Using discounts and sales to your advantage is a safe way to go about spending. It creates room within the budget for the unanticipated expenses which for many can be anything from Christmas tree repair costs to last minute shopping.

MarketingForcast.com found that this season’s estimated expenses for eating out will range from $100-$500 for the majority of shoppers. This among other factors must be considered in creating a budget.

Ringhofer addressed dining expenses by saying that her family does not quite feel the effect of that factor as she makes most every meal at home.

However, she does include the following in her budget: “Spreading out the amount spent per child, neighbor gifts, teacher gifts and other family gifts, holiday cards and outdoor lights,” she said.

The Ringhofer family is well known for going big on their holiday lights, and thus it is a bigger part of their seasonal budget.

The budget is also affected by family size. Ringhofer told us that without a doubt if she did not have her two younger boys, the two older kids would be getting a lot more from Santa each year.

Ringhofer also mentioned that because of holiday spending there are sacrifices that must be made.

“We sacrifice an extra vacation every year to account for our holiday shopping.” Although there are some compromises, Ringhofer’s family finds great joy in season shopping.

Though another year has passed, she does not see her budget changing much at all this year.

Students Become the Teachers

Black Friday affects everyone’s budget and their time; even Regis Jesuit student workers have had their first hand experiences behind the counter.

Being her first Black Friday, junior Chrissy Clark described her experience as “crazy.” Clark worked the opening of Pacsun at Park Meadows beginning at 8pm Thursday night, and ending 5am Friday morning.

Clark was given the challenge to sell brand name items that were not a part of the “buy one, get one half off” sale. Her superior’s taught her a strategy to compliment the shopper, for example she would say, “I love your scarf! Do you want this one too?”

The roles changed and Clark became our superior, teaching us this market strategy. This tactic is effective, while in our history as shoppers we have fallen for this strategy without realizing it.

Luckily, the challenge was worth it. Clark told us that the store opened an hour early giving the employees a chance to take advantage of the sales they were having.

Although Clark’s experience was “crazy” she claimed to not have any trouble with shoppers in the store. On the other hand, another Regis Jesuit student, junior Katie Templeton, did.

Templeton works at Gap at the Castle Rock Outlet Mall and shared with us her troubles explaining policies to foreign customers.

Also being her first time working Black Friday Templeton felt the pressure.

While working throughout the store,Templeton faced the challenge of  recovery duty.

“I was just recovering through the store and it was so frustrating because I would fix the section come back and it would be destroyed like a second later,” Templeton said.

Recovering the store was not the worst of Templeton’s experience. GAP being a popular brand, attracts many customers worldwide. Luckily there were no major issues of stealing but explaining simple policies to the foreign customers seemed to be a challenge.

“We have issues with certain policies that they don’t understand and we just have to explain it to them,” she said.

GAP had a 50 percent off sale of the whole store for the entire week;Templeton was wise and hit the sales before the crazed crowds.

Being that GAP had been open all week, Templeton believes that shoppers were not wise in waiting until the end of the week when the crowds came.

Although, Templeton does believe that Black Friday is very beneficial if you do your research. “You just have to be smart when you shop because I went to Target and they had no good deals besides movies, I think you really have to do the research online and in newspapers ahead of time,” she said.

She believes that if you do not plan ahead it can be a waste of time.

As employed students, Black Friday can be stressful and tiring. Templeton jokes, “There were no casualties, everyone survived.”

While Clark and Templeton stood behind the counters, the popular role amongst most other students was participation in the Black Friday frenzy.

Juniors Haley Chirco  nd Emily Harpole got to experience the craze of Black Friday not as a worker but as a shopper.

Beginning their shopping at 3:30am these girls were on a mission. Harpole says it was her first time going that early. “I was in New York City for it last year so I kind of got an experience, but it is a lot different from here.”

Arriving early was a wise decision for Harpole and Chirco. They escaped waiting in long lines, due to the crowds coming in two large waves that they did not encounter at around midnight and 6-7am.

But how was their experience?

“It was a fun experience and cool to say you went,” Harpole said.  Chirco agrees: “I agree but I don’t think I’d do it again.”

It is assumed, that mostly parents participate in Black Friday to get their Christmas shopping done, but surprisingly, students are huge benefactors to the Black Friday profit as well.

“If you have specific things you want, that is definitely the time to go, specifically Christmas presents,” Chirco said.

Junior  Caroline Molther claims she also participated in Black Friday to get some Christmas shopping done. Even students are interested in grabbing a good deal.

As high school students get older they become more involved with applying to jobs and becoming citizens of the economy. So, during this Christmas season, while big events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday take place, students are affected just as much as parents.

From in front of the counter shopping, to behind the counter working, these RJ students had the opportunity to experience Black Friday in multiple ways. Now through experience, these girls can provide advice and stories about the “craze” of Black Friday and holiday shopping in general.

The Craze

Holiday shopping is a time of giving, good deals, and cheer for most people. It’s a gateway to happiness and joy on Christmas morning as well as an expression of love and appreciation. Gift giving is not an easy task though. Giving requires sacrifice of money, time and thought, none of which is easy in the trials and tribulations of the holiday season.

No one experiences these trials and tribulations more than those who work Black Friday and are put on crowd control duty.

To get a feel for the preparation before opening, perspective regarding shoppers, and the crazy realities of Black Friday, we went to popular stores in Park Meadows including Bath and Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, and the Disney Store.

Bath and Body Works was our first stop and that’s where we met Eric. Eric started his shift at 3am-4pm on Black Friday and had some commentary about his shift.

According to Eric, not a lot of people were in the stores at 3am but some of those who he saw were very interesting.

“We had this lady come in with these two handle things with hooks on them so she could carry twice the sets of bags with her,” Eric laughed. “We’ve had people use [our] dollies to take stuff out to their cars.” It was a crazy day for him full of crazed people.

Unfortunately, there were several stealing instances, as most store employees experience. Stealing is not uncommon, especially when there are so many people in the stores. When asked about what happened he told us.

“We had to send a couple of people to the sheriffs and we had a couple of attempted situations, but you know it’s just an ordinary day,” he said.

Bath and Body Works doesn’t prosecute which in Eric’s opinion “really stinks”. They don’t have cameras so they can’t officially turn people in but if they catch someone they have to use language such as “Hey! Come back here!” to retrieve the stolen item/s.

Our second stop was to Victoria’s Secret. We spoke a girl named Kelsey who had an interesting story to tell. Although she had not seen anything outrageously out of the ordinary this year, she had a crazy story to tell about her experience last year.

“Last year we actually had women banging on the glass doors,” Kelsey said. “We were ten minutes from opening and they started banging then. We had about ten people shaking the glass so we had to call the cops on them.”

Kelsey said that after the store opened it got even crazier, “There were ladies standing on top of the tables throwing stuff to other girls so that they would get it. It was crazy!”

Black Friday is a huge money maker for most stores but not in the case of Victoria’s Secret. Since many people do their Christmas shopping on Black Friday, they are not looking to spend eighty or so dollars just on a bra. Kelsey told us that since people are mostly thinking about gifts, their beauty section (Perfumes, lip gloss, ect.) is much more popular than pricy lingerie and undergarment apparel.

Although it was busy, and a little chaotic, there were no deaths, tramplings, or injuries at the Park Meadows Mall. The same could not be said for all stores and malls in the U.S.

Just after 10pm on Thanksgiving night two men were arrested for being involved in a Kohl’s parking lot shooting in Romeoville, Illinois.

Gerald Chamberlain has been charged with theft and Robert Russell has been charged with attempted murder, retail theft and obstructing an officer. A third man, the 52 year old driver, is hospitalized according to Electrononline.wordpress.com submitted by an eye witness reporter for 7 News in Chicago, IL.

When police arrived on scene they saw one man, Russell, running out of the front doors. He was chased through the parking lot but jumped into a Pontiac Sunfire to aid his escape.

One of the officers who was in pursuit of Russell tried to jump in after him, only to have Russell close the door on his arm, not allowing the officer to disengage from the vehicle.

A second responding officer verbally ordered the driver to stop multiple times as it continued through the parking lot. When the driver refused to comply, the officer fired three to four shots at the driver.

The driver was wounded in the left arm and all three suspects were arrested, Russell, Chamberland (Who was still in the store) and the 52 year old, injured driver.

This is just another example of the “craze” of Black Friday. Thankfully, Park Meadows was not among the top stories for Black Friday issues.

Holiday Shopping can be anywhere from frustrating and chaotic to violent and dangerous. But isn’t that the price of giving?

Black Friday is an incredible opportunity to start the gift giving season at an affordable price. Although it can be intense and even downright scary, Black Friday is worth participating in.

Every year around this Holiday season stores become packed full of anxious buyers and eager spenders.

Marking the beginning of Holiday spending, Black Friday and Cyber Monday get everyone into the gift giving spirit. Though stressful, expensive, and possibly dangerous, venturing out on these days is well worth your patience, time, and energy.

Affecting students, budgets, and workers, the Holiday season is a hectic time of the year.

‘Twas The Night Before Black Friday

‘Twas the night before Black Friday, and all through the halls

Students ran to find good deals, searching all of the malls.

The posters were hung in the windows with care,

In hopes that customers would soon be there.

With Crowd control ready, not a soul was in their bed,

At 4 a.m. only spending ran through their heads.

Fathers and Mothers, are camped out in line,

While Sons and Daughters, find good deals online.

When the clock strikes six, a clatter arose,

The doors opened and all shoppers became foes.

There was pushing and shoving and shots ringing clear,

It was as I expected, Black Friday was here.