A week full of Fridays
True, Paul Maar's book, which was made into a film by the Augsburger Puppenkiste in 1977 on behalf of the Hessischer Rundfunk, which strangely enough still exists today, and has been adapted many times, including as a play, is about the reformulation of Saturday by the post office, which wanted to abbreviate the days of the week with two letters. And since 'So' twice was not helpful, Saturday was created. They actually wanted to call the day named after the planet Saturn Sarstag - but that doesn't sound so funny (a very important point in the consistently humorous post).
Cyberweek' and 'Black Friday' don't sound funny either, especially if you already think Anglicisms are stupid, but the ways in which the mail-order industry, which is courting our favour, is finding ways to equalise our consumer frenzy so that we don't do all our shopping in December, is clearly going down the drain this year.
Swiss Post warned as early as September
To coincide with the start of sales of biscuits, Christmas stollen, gingerbread and nut cinnamon in supermarkets, discounters and the remaining department stores, the notoriously overstretched former transport monopoly pointed out that gifts should be sent out in the 35th to 39th calendar week at the latest if they were to be delivered to the recipient in time for the winter solstice. And it had not even been calculated that the billions of little Chinese hands would first have to produce the microchips that are now missing all over the world.
So anyone who advertises a Black Friday week and Cyber Week November today must have created the strategy for it in August, when the fourth wave with the Delta variant was just taking off. In any case, one should take into account that all creative advertising poets naturally assume that the average German has no clue what friday or week means anyway. (Editor's note: friday means 'week off' and week stands for 'weak month with 30 days').
Red pen sales
We all know that the really good and important achievements of our society come from the United States across the pond. So also the realisation that the suggestion of a price reduction by means of a red pencil is wholly insufficient. Therefore, traditionally in the USA, a special offer is made clear by means of a black bar. Advertisers copied this from the censorship of pictures and films before digital pixelation came along.
So if you were hoping to wait until the end of November to pick out and buy an electronic gift that will be on the table in just over a month's time, in order to catch radical bargain prices ... it's too late for you now.
For this reason, the federal government has considered, since there is no basic right to Christmas (as there is not for culture, art, spiritual edification or education in principle), to hold out the prospect of giving presents for March next year. Of course, only if the infection situation allows it by then and the supply chains have recovered. This will be decided retroactively at the meeting of the holiday committee in April 2047, which has yet to be elected.
Supply bottlenecks versus consumption frenzy
The well-intentioned plan to pre-empt stupid consumers from having to make last-minute purchases to satisfy their consumption frenzy is, after all, based on the assumption that globalisation works and does not become a stumbling block for industry over 20 months of policy shock.
The pleasant result is that we can breathe a sigh of relief: No more family Christmas parties, no more Christmas markets, no need to buy presents, no stress or arguments, no winter, empty motorways, bagged soup alone by candlelight due to power cuts, pure contemplation and relaxation.