With the holidays cycling through again, every one has to worry about gift shopping. “Who will save us with unbelievable deals and un-matched prices?” the consumers cry. “Who will sweep us off our feet with the best products for less?” Then, suddenly, what’s that on your local street corner? Is it a school? Is it a hospital? No, it is Wal-Mart, and Best-Buy, and J.C. Penney! The holiday spirit is saved once again by these heroic and self-sacrificing stores.

You are all being scammed. These stores that I have mentioned and many others are not there for the holiday jingle, but for the jingle coming from your purse. The only green they like is not from a christmas tree, but from crisp dollar bills. Retail corporations that use the Black Friday tactic to sell products are horrible corporations that perpetuate violence, poor treatment of workers, and conning.

The first and most obvious reason to not go to Black Friday stores is the danger. Blackfridaydeathcount.com and huffingtonpost.com show that there have been numerous deaths and many more injuries in the Black Friday chaos, and Black Friday Deathcount only keeps track of deaths and injuries covered by the media. One of the most ridiculous cases in my opinion occurred in 2008. A crowd outside of a Wal-Mart waited impatiently for the midnight opening of the store, just hours after being thankful for what they already had. Some people even skipped the Thanksgiving family time to be in the front of the line. Unfortunately, the Wal-Mart never actually opened. The crowd literally kicked down the doors before the employees opened them, and as thousands of people ran into the Wal-Mart, an employee and two shoppers were trampled to death. Even the paramedics that tried to help the poor people were nearly trampled to death as well. And the shoppers’ excuse? There is none. The only reasoning behind this selfishness is, “I just HAD to get that product that was on sale!” This and many other events such as shootings, pepper-sprayings, and beatdowns show the violence of Black Friday shopping, and the terrible irony that these gifts are being fought over for the sake of Christmas joy. Yes, you could point out that Black Friday injuries went down this year. However, any violence at all because of Christmas gift shopping is ridiculous. The point of Christmas gift shopping is to spread joy and to objectify your love for someone, not clamor for sales.

Keep in mind that employees do not only suffer on Black Friday from being trampled to death. Martha Sellers, a Wal-Mart employee herself, described to aljazeera.com the conditions she works in every day. “Very few managers say, 'Thanks, you did a great job'” (Martha Sellers). Also, she would only get paid 7.56$ an hour before her and fellow employees started protesting. According to Fox News, many retail stores have started opening on Thanksgiving day this year. Because of this, millions of underpaid, overworked employees not only have to deal with a materialistically insane crowd, but they have to do this on Thanksgiving day, one of the few days they (used to) get off from work to spend time with friends and family. No one should have to work hours like Sellers does.

Even if you don’t care about the fact that people die from Black Friday and miss out on being with their families, you are still being directly affected by something else. Conning is a major retail technique, and has been for a few decades. There are three big forms of conning that retail stores will use on Black Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. I like to call them decoy products, derivative products, and phantom sales.

First of all, the decoys. Decoys are useless things like donut makers and towels that retail stores will put on sale rather than the actually valuable things like plasma televisions. The televisions and computers are shown in glamorous Black Friday commercials, but they’re actually in low supply. Then people will go for the decoys and the company won’t have to sacrifice as much profit by selling the really valuable things for less.

The next scam is the derivative product. A derivative product is a product that looks exactly like the original, but is built out of other, cheaper substances. Shoppers believe they’re buying something good, but it is really just a version that will break more easily and may even have less functions if it is electronic. Remember the really valuable things like televisions and computers that get saved by the decoys? Usually, the few non-decoys that are in the store are these derivative products.

The last and worst of all is the phantom sale. Let us suppose a retailer sells sweaters. The supplying factory only sells the sweater to the retailer for 15 US dollars. At the retail store, the sweater costs 50 US dollars. A few sweaters go for this price, but the retailer starts raking in the cash when he puts up a sign in his window that says, “50% OFF SAVE MONEY WITH THIS AMAZING DEAL!!!”. Then he sells the sweaters for the price he intended to make a profit from, 25 US dollars. The retailer never has to sacrifice any good profit, and the consumers are fooled into thinking that they just got a great deal. Even worse is that decoys and derivatives products are being sold by way of phantom sales. So, in a nutshell, the perceived benefit of Black Friday is actually a big pile of poop.

This may be difficult to deal with at first, but never fear. There is a simple way to avoid being swindled. Thanks to the internet, it is easy to buy anything on sale anytime, anywhere. There are simple bidding websites like quibids.com that can offer a good deal on any product, considering quibids’ strict policy to never sell anything above its retail price. There are also simple retail websites like amazon.com where you can usually get good deals on products. In 2011, Time magazine pointed out that a Black Friday ad from Staples included an 8GB flash drive for eight dollars, but it was also available on amazon for half that price.

So now you see that Black is not only the color of profit, it is the color of evil. Do not let your Thanksgiving turn Black, or your Christmas for that matter. Stick with the green and red on your tree, and try to spend some time eating with your family while you still can.