We all anticipate it each year; it’s the day after Thanksgiving, and for a lot of us, it’s merely a couple hours following our Thanksgiving meals. Black Friday shopping is one of the highlights of the year. We can’t wait to flock to the mall, along with hundreds of other people, to win the best deals and buy more things we don’t really need. The stores are packed, the lines are long, and we’re exhausted… so why is it worth it? What exactly about Black Friday shopping is so magnetizing that makes it so incredibly irresistible?

It can’t be the sales, because in all honesty, they just aren’t that great. Aside from a handful of stores, the majority are just marketing schemes that want you to get out of bed at the unreasonable hour of four A.M. just so they can make more money. Black Friday is just one colossal marketing game that fools us into thinking there are better sales than there really are. A great example of this is when a store deliberately hands you a card upon entering the store that says something along the lines of “Bring to Register to Redeem for up to 50 percent off!” What does this even mean? This means you will probably end up getting maybe 15 percent off, and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re really lucky, you’ll get 25 percent off. In all reality, only about ten people the entire day probably get the lucky 50 percent off card.

You can’t judge a store’s sale by the length of the line. This is a huge trap. For example, Victoria’s Secret had a massive line this year. They weren’t even letting people into the store until some people left, in order to maintain a certain number of people inside. This long line makes the average passerby think there’s a better sale going on than there really is. After standing in the line for ten minutes, you walk in and realize it’s just another one of those classic Victoria’s Secret gimmicks: “Spend $75 and get a gigantic glittery tote.” There’s two problems with this: nobody can afford to spend $75 in this store, and even when/if you do, they always end up “running out” of whatever tote they are giving out for free this time. This has happened on more than one occasion, so buyer beware of this scheme.

Take Forever 21 as another example of how Black Friday does not live up to its expectations. What even is the sale at Forever 21 on Black Friday, since the entire store is already so cheap? They simply could not afford to run a half-off sale, or else the clothes would be selling for nearly nothing. So, in all reality, Forever 21 is not worth waking up for on Black Friday. It’s just not. I really rather sleep in and go at one in the afternoon, so I am awake enough to read price tags.

Express, however, is another story. The Black Friday sale Express has every year doesn’t makes sense, and it is baffling how they manage to make any money during it. Express runs a “50 percent off” sale each year, and it is no joke. Their beautiful clothes really are half the price, and this mere fact is the reason I can be pulled out of bed at four in the morning. It’s worth it every year, and is usually one of the busiest stores in the mall on Black Friday. This is mainly because all of the clothes are simply beautiful, and at a simply beautiful price. The sale makes you want to buy the entire store, because it’s truly an investment when you think about it. At twelve o’clock in the afternoon, everything goes back to being full price, so it’s important to get to Express early in the morning if you want the sale, and more importantly if you want your correct size.

So is Black Friday really all it’s cracked up to be? You choose. Part of the fun isn’t just the sales, but the mere act of waking up at unreasonable hour just to say you did. In the end, nine times out of ten it won’t be worth it, but do it for the one time out of ten that it is.