People often say that "Cyber Monday," which is the Monday after Thanksgiving, is the start of online holiday shopping or the biggest online shopping day of the year, but neither of these is true. The theory says that people do a lot of their real-world shopping on "Black Friday," which is another myth about the Friday after Thanksgiving, and start their online shopping when they go back to work on Monday.
It's not clear where the term came from. It was probably made up by the media to make a story where none existed. Yes, more and more of our holiday shopping is happening online, and there is a season for online holiday shopping, but it doesn't start when the media would like it to. They already have a name and a day for the beginning of the holiday shopping season—Black Friday—so they should have the same for the beginning of the online shopping season, right? The media made Cyber Monday because they wanted a story.
In reality, there is no one day when the season starts. From the middle or end of November until about a week before Christmas, online shopping is busiest.
The Monday after Thanksgiving was convenient, and it made more sense back when people didn't have high-speed internet at home. The reason for this is that people didn't want to shop on a slow dial-up connection at home, so they waited until they could use their employer's high speed connection. Since most people now have high-speed connections, this argument doesn't make as much sense. Most people probably won't wait until Monday, when they have to catch up on work after a four-day break, to start their online shopping. Instead, they will go online after Thanksgiving dinner and get a head start on it.
Consumers have also been taking it easy as the holiday shopping season approaches. We can tell this because every year, holiday decorations and gifts start showing up earlier and earlier. Some stores are now selling Christmas decorations before Halloween. If people didn't buy it, it wouldn't be there. As we ease into the holiday season, we can do the same thing online, where we can now find holiday decorations all year long.
When it comes to online shopping, the biggest day is between one and two weeks before Christmas. This is because most of us put things off as long as possible. Most of the time, the last Saturday before Christmas is the busiest shopping day in the stores near us. About a week before Christmas, we have to finish our shopping by the last day we can ship something and still have it arrive before the holiday. That deadline isn't that important either, since we can always get a gift card at the last minute. This makes the holiday shopping season last longer, since we do most of our shopping after Christmas when we have those gift cards.
We hope that this year, the media will realise that "Cyber Monday" doesn't really exist and we won't hear much about it.
