Five Reasons to Celebrate Thanksgiving Abroad

As some of you know, this year we decided to have ourselves a little adventure this Thanksgiving. We like to call it the Great Thanksgivingukkah, Catalonia-style.

Many people drive for hours to see their family, or brave the airports to get stuck at snow-filled connections, just to see their family for a few hours.  This is, as many like to say, par for the course.

Thus, we decided what's a few hours of flying? It was time to celebrate the holiday outside the country!!!  Close your eyes, nap for a few hours and then.....hola, Barcelona!  See how easy that was?

Now, we knew Thanksgiving outside of the U.S. would have its benefits, but in hindsight they were even greater than anticipated.  So behold, our top 5 reasons to leave the country on Thanksgiving!

1) It's the cheapest time to see Europe.  For reals.

2) If you're visiting friends, you can still have Thanksgiving dinner!  We may have been thousands of miles away from home, but we were not without our turkey and marshmallow covered sweet potatoes.

mmm .... malvaviscos rosa y blanco

3) Better wine while you eat, and no football.  You can actually converse with the other guests without having them fall asleep on you!

4) Airports are packed with people flying within the 50 states - international flights? Not so much.  You'd never know we were flying on a holiday weekend!

5) And perhaps the best part of traveling abroad on Thanksgiving: missing Black Friday!  Instead of fighting with strangers in the name of consumerism, we spent our day visiting gorgeous architecture, taking a walking tour of a new city, learning some Spanish history, drinking fabulous coffee, and learning about fun local traditions such as Caga Tio, the Catalonian Christmas log you hit with a special Christmas stick so he poops out presents and candy.  (If you think we're making this up, read more about it here).  Strange to see a culture that brings out the squatting statuettes on the holidays.

Because we like you peeps, we'll spare you the picture of Hello Kitty and her pink turd, which means you'll have to take our word for it on this one.

Caga Tios, everywhere you look.  Every home has one.

A big thank you to our hostess with the mostess

So there you have it.  If you ever get a chance to have yourself a little Thanksgiving adventure outside of the U.S., take it! And unlike this year, you won't have to worry about what to do about Chanukah either.  Though if you do, get thee some Southeast Asian cauliflower/zucchini fritters, which taste just like the real thing. You heard it here first.

"Black Friday" Not So Dark After All

No matter how far down the toilet the economy goes, the American people will get up at 5am to find it.

Left: Black Friday at the King of Prussia Mall

Those of us with jobs, stocks, savings or investment accounts (this just about covers everyone) will be waiting with baited breath until 9:01am when the stock market opens on Monday. If this picture is any indication, we can relax.

As she has over the past several years, Poker Chick went to the second-largest mall in the United States to check out the state of American consumerism and report back to her readers. If a picture can tell a thousand words, this one could be an article all on its own. However, that would be a boring post, so Poker Chick will elaborate. Yay for you.

Just to give you an idea of how important this is, last year Black Friday represented 10.1% of all holiday sales. Indeed Poker Chick has observed this phenomenon at the same mall on the same day at the same time. And she can honestly say she's never seen it this crowded.

This was surprising. We expected fewer shoppers this year. Several stores resorted to the desperate measure of declaring "early" Black Friday this year. So theoretically those shoppers had already bought their gifts. Also, the news was reporting as much as 19% declines in pre-holiday sales. And of course, most of us have been assuming people would spend less this year, spend less time shopping, or just avoid the stores entirely. After all, the day after Thanksgiving shouldn't have to revolve around spending money to be enjoyable or productive. Right?

Wrong. Seems Americans are a wee bit reluctant to give up one of their favorite pastimes. And just for a little credibility here, Poker Chick is not the only one who noticed. CNN reported a "robust start" to Black Friday today. Media outlets in Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, and other states were reporting huge crowds. In Valley Stream, NY, shoppers turned Black Friday into a contact sport, stampeding a local Wal-Mart and and killing an employee in the process. And finally, many of us forgot that unpredictable variable: the non-native shopper. Foreigners were out in droves taking advantage of the sales. Some flew all the way from Australia (No, not the movie, stupid).

Maybe the great bargains succeeded in getting people to shop after all. Many stores apparently decided the standby phrase "ONE DAY BLOWOUT SALE!" wasn't persuasive enough, and put out the most exaggerated descriptors they could think of to attract customers.

Right: Old Navy screams savings, in case you missed it.

So, let's say it worked. Will the volume of shoppers make up for the revenue loss from all this discounting? Who knows. We'll all find out when we read the news tomorrow. In the meantime, PC predicts the hemmorhaging of the market will slow down. Well, at least temporarily. This will buy us some time to review our purchases and think up as many synonyms as we can for "inflation".

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Poker Chick is a writer, mother, and avid shopper from New York.

Can These Guys Fix The Economy? The Solution to Sluggish Holiday Sales is Here!

On October 30th, Poker Chick went to buy some Halloween stickers. Sure, she knew it was last-minute, but she still expected the drugstore to be stocked for the holiday.

Apparently, it had already moved on.

Right there, above the picked-over remains of whatever Halloween cards were left, was a Santa hat. A Santa hat, peeps. Did we mention this was October 30th?

She filed away this disturbing observation and it was all-but-forgotten until she read this article in Advertising Age.

K-Mart has announced that it is moving "Black Friday" to November 2nd. That's right, two days after Halloween.

Now it was one thing when retailers could barely wait for turkey to digest before displaying their flashiest new toys. But right after Halloween? Aside from being just wrong, it reeks of desperation. I mean, this is K-Mart, for chrissakes! One of the countries largest retailers! Millions of Americans shop there. It's not like they'd ever be in danger of having to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy or anything...

Oh. Right. Well then.

But still. C'mon, peeps. Buying Santa hats right after Halloween is not going to help. Trust us on this one.