Jennifer Horgan: Turn your back on Black Friday and embrace the humble charity shop tradition

Like a bad tooth, it has rotten roots. The original Black Friday was on September 24, 1869, when two rapacious financiers tried to buy up all of America’s gold shares, causing the stock market to plummet. A century-and-a-half later, it continues to be bad news for us all, breathing life into the greed and commercialism that’s killing our planet.

Amazon, scourge of all scourges, now has a Black Friday WEEK with endless products already listed as ‘early’ Black Friday deals.

Well, hear ye, hear ye, this coming festive season, I’m out. In a more general sense, I’m turning my back on America, shunning the Jeff and the Donald, the Elon and the RFK. Instead, I’m embracing European traditions — and one in particular: the hollowed art of charity and second-hand shopping.

Charity shops

You could say I’m going Elizabethan — the era in which the first charity shop reportedly opened its doors as The Wolverhampton Society for the Blind in Staffordshire.

It’s no surprise that the habit has stuck. Aside from the charity bit, it’s the creativity of it that gets me going. Shop volunteers do incredible work sifting through donations, but ultimately, every shopping experience is unpredictable — a game of pure chance. 

The merchandise on offer belongs to neither season nor trend. Will you find your size? Your style? Your colour? You can get genuinely dizzy with the fun of it, that liberating rifle through silks and satins, from bra cups to cup-cups, crystal candle-holders, to ceramic milk jugs.

And when you find that treasure…Well, it is a double joy. You’re giving something back while simultaneously welcoming a new object into your life — somebody else’s story becoming, or at least intertwining, with your own.

I have had some really special charity shop buys. I remember being pregnant with my second child and living in London. A few weeks after finding out we were welcoming a baby girl, I passed a charity shop. It was autumn, my favourite season. And it was my favourite kind of autumn day, crisp and clear with a healthy bite in it.

In the window, was a painting of flowers, a bit like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers only without its wilting sadness, bursting with purples and pinks and greens. In the right-hand corner was a purple scrawl of a name. My mother’s name — Patricia.

I bought that painting for my unborn baby girl. I couldn’t carry it home, but they held it for me until my husband could collect it and bring it back to our small flat. It hangs in her bedroom in Cork today.

Where did the painting come from? Who was Patricia? The painting carries its own ghosts, its provenance. Why did it end up in that shop, on that particular day in that particular part of the city? The connection feels stronger than if I had found it in a regular shop, or even in a gallery.

There is an authenticity you feel, finding your treasure buried deep in the junk and jumble. It is an individuality you just can’t find from a main street shop, or a popular brand, promoting its latest fad or season.

It’s a kind of time-play too. The object as talisman, connecting past and present, strange and familiar. It creates a kind of tapestry between us, an exchange of lives and stories, a carrying-on. 

Very few of us will go through life without any affection for our belongings. It’s a tough thing, to separate from them when the time comes, perhaps even more painful when we must part with the belongings of a loved one.

I recall another particularly good haul from a charity shop near Schull in West Cork, about a decade ago. Inside, were all these exquisitely painted ladles and cheeseboards. I bought the lot. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them there, not when someone had put such time and care into them. They hang in my mother’s kitchen now. 

It’s nice, isn’t it? That someone’s work is still on show in somebody else’s house, still enjoyed. Charity shopping offers a kind of resuscitation.

It is also part of a very necessary rebellion. I find it harder and harder to watch ads on TV now, or to listen to them on the radio. Big companies selling new, unsustainable STUFF. Products with no history, straight out of a factory, and lacking any integrity of design. 

I can’t be bothered with any of it. The amassing STUFF feels even more oppressive this week when I keep on coming home to plastic-covered election leaflets, eyeballing plastic ties on election posters from my window. It’s madness.

Now, I’m far from perfect. I buy some things new, especially for my children. I’ll be spotted in Dunnes and Next over the coming weeks no doubt — finding what I simply can’t find second-hand. 

I understand completely that white goods and electronics, once-in-a-lifetime buys, are necessarily bought new, but that said, I can imagine a world where there might be fewer and fewer exceptions to a ‘buying second-hand’ rule.

The second-hand rebellion

The first step towards such a reality is to make our charity shops as good as they can be. There is a worrying trend in Irish charity shopping that deserves mentioning here — something less apparent across the water or in mainland Europe. 

To give second-hand outlets a fighting chance of competing with the gloss of new items, we need to keep our standards very high. The shops themselves need to be pleasant to walk around, washed and clean, and stocked with items worthy of consideration.

The quality of the merchandise matters too. Shein and other ‘buy to wear once’ labels have no place in a charity shop. They belong to fast fashion. Throwing them in a charity bag doesn’t make the original purchase any less damaging. After a few wears, they are rarely worth keeping as the quality of the fabric is so very low.

We need to recognise and celebrate what charity shopping provides — an unpredictable, creative shopping experience that is entirely unique to one particular place and time. Cities are being emptied by online shopping. What if second-hand shopping got people back into them, to shop and socialise?

What if other shops became more invested in the business of protecting the planet and lessening the divide between us all? Take Brown Thomas or Arnotts. Few people can afford to darken their doors these days. What if they offered to take back excellently preserved items bought in their store? They could have a pre-loved section, offering store credit in exchange. 

Primark is already doing it with their recycling scheme for Unicef — why not high-end stores? It would provide more footfall, whilst encouraging wealthier shoppers back into the shop to spend more on new produce. 

It’s not perfect, but it’s something. It acknowledges that we can’t keep on buying without any concern for the consequences of unbridled human consumption. It’s already happening online with sites like Depop — we need to exchange goods in real life too.

Plenty feel as I do. A friend posted that great Chuck Palahniuk quotation from his novel, Fight Club, online last week: “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” The thing is… we don’t have to. We can just stop — wander the aisles of beautiful, heart-filled charity shops instead.