The turkey and stuffing were just cleared from the Thanksgiving table, but dessert was not even an option. Instead, the plan was to pack the car and join the already long line wrapped around the local Best Buy and Target. Black Friday was once the prime time to catch the hottest deals of the year. People would fight over the cheapest flat screen TV or kitchen appliance. Though comically intense, there was something truly alluring about the chokehold this day had on all of us back in the day.  

But now, since sales start weeks before, and the best deals can be found online from your couch, the “holiday” has lost its magic. 

The beauty of Black Friday is how quickly it comes, and just how quickly it goes away. Huge sales should be reserved for the Friday after Thanksgiving and no more. But, in the two weeks before Thanksgiving, Black Friday deals from brands we’ve never heard of fill up our inboxes. Now, Black Friday is nothing more than a day in the middle of two weeks of holiday sales. 

This poor timing, however, is just the beginning of the shortcomings of Black Friday; the anticipation of lining up around the store and waking up before the crack of dawn to be the first in line are no longer practices of this special day. Instead, like everything else, anything you can find in store can also be found from the comfort of your own home. Sales are accessible from nearly every mobile device, and within minutes, your online cart can be stocked just as much as it would have been in person. The fun of waking up early, camping outside of a store and running through the aisles to grab anything off of the racks is no longer a tradition, and this day of supposed “steals” has become nothing more than 15 minutes on your computer. 

Stores have also been skimping on their deals. Years ago, items would be going for nearly free, a minimum of 50 percent off could be seen on price tags across most stores, and if you didn’t catch these rare deals, they wouldn’t be back until the next year. Now shoppers are lucky if stores throw them more than 30 percent off. “Deals” nowadays have consisted of free shipping, money off items that were probably already on the clearance rack or a mere 10 percent off. In some cases, like at Target, customers have posted pictures of price tags with a sale on it hiding the original price—which is the exact same. At this point, Black Friday no longer feels like the exciting Hunger Games of our generation, played in the arena of our local malls, but perhaps a lackluster ploy to get customers to buy into fake deals.

In the end, not much hangs in the balance of a less monumental Black Friday. Buying new clothes, a new airfryer or a new mattress at 10 percent off instead of 50 percent will not make or break our bank accounts, and just like every other day of the year, paying full price isn’t the end of the world. But there is something painfully nostalgic about the way Black Friday used to be. 

It seems silly to describe a commercialized holiday meant to keep business flowing during the holiday season as nostalgic. But Black Friday’s changes make us aware of the time that has passed. These changes feel like we are saying goodbye to yet another beloved tradition and losing something that we will never get back; it’s the first addition to our generation’s “back in my day.”