COVID-19’s affect on Holiday Shopping

Christmas Spirit Through Adopt-a-Family

By Jack Grzebien

It’s that time of year! Christmas cheer is starting up, the winter weather is coming in, and the time to buy all of our Christmas gifts has arrived. As always Bishop Ireton will be running the Adopt-A-Family program through each advisory. Once we all return from Thanksgiving break, advisors will be discussing the Adopt-A-Family program with their students. AdoptA-Family is a program that we do in cooperation with Community Lodgings, where each advisory is given the opportunity to purchase the Christmas list of a less fortunate child in the Alexandria area. This year, students will be able to go out and purchase the gifts on the list and then at a time after school, students will have the opportunity to wrap these gifts before they are delivered to Community Lodgings. This is a great time to give back to the community especially when we are all so blessed to be able to attend a Catholic school. If you have any questions regarding Adopt-A-Family please direct those to your advisor.

COVID-19’s Affect on Holiday Shopping

By Olivia Decarlo

The name “Black Friday” originated in Philadelphia during the Army versus Navy football game in 1961. Police decided to give it its name due to the mass amounts of traffic and crowds at the “kickoff’’ of the holiday season, according to the official Black Friday website. Also, the name refers to stores operating ‘in the black’ due to increased sales according to the History.com website. Cyber Monday takes place after Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Cyber Monday became known in 2005 when online shopping began trending in the United States. Last year, Cyber Monday became beneficial due to Covid-19. This allowed stores to stay Covid safe and still get the business they needed. Due to the amount of people on the stores websites at this time trafficking became easier, stores then began to put out warnings and cautions. Black Friday and Cyber Monday allow an early jumpstart for your holiday shopping. This year stores are continuing with their great deals and sales. International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), COVID-19 has impacted overseas shipping due to leaving 400,000 seafarers stranded. Another impact of COVID-19 was protecting seafarers themselves from the virus. Mr. Barger, Bishop Ireton’s finance class teacher, did some research and said “big box stores will lead the way due to having more inventory, better sales, and a larger presence online,” some examples of these businesses such as; Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Costco will be having many deals and sales items such as phones, TV’s. These prices can be up to 50% off. This year most stores are going to open back up for their inperson shoppers. Last year the holiday season started with most stores pushing the majority of their sales to Cyber Monday and throughout the week. This year Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be returning back to normal with in store and online deals. “With the pandemic I would not even think about going to a store on Black Friday and I think this year many shoppers will do the same.” says Mr. Barger. Black Friday and Cyber Monday usually level out to be even.

Where do you plan on doing your holiday shopping?

Siena Puglisi

Junior

“I plan on doing most of my holiday shopping at Macys because they always have good deals during this time of year.”