Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • The Atlantic

    The Deeper Meaning of Black Friday

    <span>Giving a gift is an act of competition as much as generosity.</span>
    by Ian Bogost Nov 27, 2015 4 minutes
    Source: Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

    Get $100 off the iPad Air 2 at Best Buy. Save $50 on the Xbox One Gears of War Bundle plus get a $60 Target Gift Card. At Walmart, one can buy a Samsung Smart HDTV for under $200. Under $200!

    These are the marks of Black Friday, the annual bacchanal for consumer excess. And excess, it is normally thought, is a sign of vice. Profligacy. Christmas, the backlash insists, isn’t about possessing things, but about family and salvation, respect and contrition.

    Except, in another sense, it isn’t. Whether one is a believer or not, Christmas is about a particularly excessive gift—an ultimate gift, the gift of God’s only son,

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from The Atlantic

    The Atlantic5 min read
    The Strangest Job in the World
    This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. The role of first lady couldn’t be stranger. You attain the position almost by accident, simply by virtue of being married to the president
    The Atlantic6 min read
    The Happy Way to Drop Your Grievances
    Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. In 15th-century Germany, there was an expression for a chronic complainer: Greiner, Zanner, which can be translated as “whiner-grumbler.” It was no
    The Atlantic6 min read
    There’s Only One Way to Fix Air Pollution Now
    It feels like a sin against the sanctitude of being alive to put a dollar value on one year of a human life. A year spent living instead of dead is obviously priceless, beyond the measure of something so unprofound as money. But it gets a price tag i

    Related Books & Audiobooks