Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, a day when families come together, enjoy good company and good food.  A typical Thanksgiving dinner in my family is turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing (a bread dish), buttercup squash, corn, cranberry sauce, and rolls.  For dessert there's the obligatory pumpkin pie.  (Here's the pumpkin pie recipe that I use, you can use real baked pumpkin or squash instead of canned.)  Then everyone falls into a tryptophan- and carbohydrate-induced coma and rests up for the next day:  Black Friday! 

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, the first shopping day of the Christmas season.  It's called Black Friday because it's the first day of the year when stores start making a profit, so they are "in the black" and no longer "in the red".  In the last years sales and retail-mania have been increasing, so that people wait in lines and crowds in front of stores for hours before they open to get the most desired items that are on sale for super low prices and are only available in limited numbers. Last year some stores even opened at midnight to start the Black Friday sales.  Even back when I was a student people were so crazed for the Black Friday deals that they literally got into fistfights over items that were only available in limited quantities.  How's that for some Christmas spirit?

Do you know of a shopping day like this in your home country? 
Would you like to go shopping in America on Black Friday (or have you)?
Answer these questions and check out some Black Friday sales here.  What would you like to buy on Black Friday if you were to go shopping?  Or would you boycott this day?  Why?

Email us your answers to sarah@virtualingua.de.  If you are a student with Virtualingua already, you can do this as one of your tutored exercises.  If you aren't learning with us yet, you can do this exercise and send us your answers to get a free sample of our professional tutoring!