If Joy Comes with a Receipt and Regret, Maybe It’s Not Joy at All

This season’s not about sales. It’s about strategy. If your joy comes with debt, maybe it’s not joy. Let’s talk about spending that builds instead of breaks.

Every November, we’re told the same story. Be thankful. Show up. Spend big. The economy depends on it, right? Black Friday. One long weekend of financial whiplash designed to make you believe love lives in a shopping cart.

But I want to ask something different: What if we didn’t buy our way into gratitude this year?

What if we looked past the sales and slogans and asked what this season really costs us: Black families, Black futures, Black wealth?

Because here’s what I know: We’re told to show up with gifts, but no one tells us to show up with strategy. And every year, we lose more than we gain.

This Isn’t a Fluke. It’s a Formula.

We’ve made spending part of the tradition without asking who it really serves.

According to the National Retail Federation, Americans plan to spend $890.49 per person this holiday season. That’s the second-highest holiday spend in the survey’s 23-year history.

Now multiply that across millions of families who are barely breaking even. Who’s really benefiting?

You already know the answer. It’s not our block. It’s not our banks. It’s not our babies.

Holiday economics are set up to extract from us emotionally, spiritually, financially. It’s not about celebration. It’s about circulation. But the money we circulate rarely finds its way back.

Let’s be clear: that’s not accidental. That’s structure. That’s capitalism doing what it was built to do.

The season that’s supposed to bring joy ends up being one of the most emotionally and financially draining times of the year. We’ve been taught to express love through spending, even when that spending breaks us.

Black consumers’ collective economic power is projected to grow from $910 billion in 2019 to $1.7 trillion by 2030. Yet despite this economic footprint, Black communities remain underserved across major sectors of consumption. When we don’t understand all that we can build with our $1.7 trillion in spending power, we end up donating those dollars to people who do not invest in us, only profit from us.

The imbalance isn’t just economic, it’s structural. It reflects who our economy is built to serve and who it routinely ignores.

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