How to Survive Black Friday

By Avishay Artsy on Friday, November 28, 2008.

Retailers are crossing their fingers that today American consumers will bail them out of a tough past few months. Black Friday is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, though bargain-hunters looking to avoid being trampled to death may wait it out and spend Cyber Monday shopping from the comfort of their office.

But for those willing to brave the rabid crowds, Wired has some tips on perfect holiday gifts, including the $100 Netflix box that streams 15,000 films, the Keurig Mini single-cup coffeemaker, and the Flip Mino micro-cam that stores an hour of video and easily uploads it to YouTube.

Meanwhile, Slate takes the opposite tack with bargains to avoid at all costs, such as TVs that are too big or fancy for your living room, unnecessary extended warranties, photo printers, and FM iPod transmitters.

How about taking an alternate route: creating and building gifts yourself? Instructables.com offers homemade gift ideas, from solar powered robot ornaments, to soaps and candles, to a Dali-style melting clock made from old vinyl records.

Then again, why buy anything at all? The perennial Buy Nothing Day campaign urges us to "unshop, unspend and unwind," at least for a single day.

(Photo by John Niedermeyer)

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