A Darker Black Friday and Generosity

Dear Long Weekend Spenders:

When policy or politics seems to be careening out of control, I often take comfort in history, finding how we have endured even greater upheavals in past disasters. It’s a technique found in several Psalms (41, 61, 71, 91, 140 and others), where the author reminds the reader of God’s help and provision during great calamities of the past, concluding that God will surely be present for us now. Perhaps the best hymnological example is “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,” where Isaac Watts (1674-1748) paraphrased Psalm 90 into a glorious congregational song (sample here). A more contemporary example can be found in Tom Trenney’s soulful hymn, “God Wouldn't Bring You This Far to Leave You” (2022, sample here). I find singing this affirmation even more reassuring than reading it.

So with survivorship in mind, my musing today turns to Black Friday, the annual retail frenzy spurred by an extra day off after Thanksgiving. It seems exploitative to pin a day of spending immediately after being loosened up by a day of thanks, but it’s the same logic that in worship places the offering right after the sermon and prayer. Like so many traditions, our conception of Black Friday as a celebration of retail is relatively recent. The term was used somewhat infrequently in the 1960s as the point where stores could find themselves ‘in the black’ after eleven months of less than break-even sales. Becoming solidified in the 1980s as a retail benchmark, the term became widely used as an advertising pitch in the early 2000s. Prior to this period, the term Black Friday had everything to do with money, but nothing to do with Christmas.

Following the Civil War, the torn nation found itself in significant debt. Wars, like Christmas, work that way; it’s all parades and celebrations until the credit card bills arrive a few weeks later. During the war, the Lincoln administration recognized the need for some monetary manipulation and decoupled a new currency from the gold standard. This currency became known as “green backs,” allowing their value to ‘float’ because they were not backed by any precious metal reserves. Mandated as the only payment for federal debts, “both public and private”, these ‘notes’ served to take gold currency out of circulation, causing the price of gold to rise sharply. Ulysses S. Grant inherited this monetary mess and set a course to return the nation to the gold standard within a decade.

Grant’s younger sister, Virginia, had married a small-time speculator named Abel Corbin, who teamed up with legendary financiers Jay Gould (think Gilded Age) and James Fisk, who hatched a plan to corner the market on Grant’s gradual process of gold redemption from U.S. reserves. Through Corbin, Gould and Fisk befriended Grant, hoping to receive inside information about the Treasury’s gold sale schedule, thereby knowing in advance the best timing for their gold purchases. Grant realized their scheme and, without their knowledge, suspended the sale of gold for well over a month. Corbin, Gould and Fisk continued to purchase gold, thinking they knew the timing of each sale from the Federal Reserve, but without any release, their purchases became more and more expensive.

Not wanting his baby sister left destitute, Grant instructed his brother-in-law Corbin to sell all his precious metal assets ahead of a massive $4 million dump of gold on the markets by the U.S. Treasury. On September 24, 1869, a Friday, Secretary of the Treasury George S. Boutwell authorized one of the greatest single sales of gold in history (worth nearly $1 billion in today’s money), causing the price to plummet. Gould and Fisk were financially ruined.

By today’s or any day’s standards, Grant’s special instructions to Corbin were obviously corrupt. But following an 1870 government investigation headed by fellow Republican James A. Garfield, Grant was exonerated of any illicit involvement in the conspiracy. Garfield was rewarded for his loyalty, becoming president in 1881; and for the next century, when people mentioned Black Friday, they were referring to a government-driven financial scheme of corruption and insider trading.

Fast forward fifteen decades, and the term Cyber Monday has been tacked on to the weekend, with internet sales becoming nearly half of all pre-Christmas spending. More recently, Giving Tuesday has become intertwined with the spending frenzy, but the label is so new that no Google Ngram exists for reference. 

Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, and I assume you’re reading this Cyber-Monday Musing while waiting for a price comparison to load on your Prime or Wayfair account. I suggest you hold back a bit for generosity tomorrow as an affirmation that we can survive through the living of these days as we have endured through ages past. 

Having spent my entire adult life living off the generosity of donations, I’m inclined to wish we could shift Tuesday for Friday, but alas, that’s not going to happen. I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor