By now, most Finns have already heard of Black Friday, which is celebrated mainly in the United States. What few people know, though, is how this particular holiday got started, and how it relates to Finland.
In 1659, a man named Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on a desert island while on a shopping trip to Africa to pick up slaves for his plantation. On the island, Crusoe rescued a young man who was about to be sacrificed from his pursuers and named him Friday.
As time went on, Robinson taught the young man English, converted him to Christianity, and trained him to serve as his servant. You know, the usual stuff you do for friends.
Friday became Crusoe’s trusted companion, and together they adventured around the world, right up until Friday died from arrows shot by attackers in 1694. Depressed by the loss of his beloved servant, Crusoe decided that from then on, every single year, the Friday after the fourth Thursday of November would be Black Friday.
Because Friday had been found during a trade expedition to Africa, Crusoe wanted to honor his friend’s memory by selling fake pearls, toys, knives, scissors, shards of glass, axes, and above all slaves at a discount on a certain day.
Writer Daniel Defoe had documented the adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Friday in fairly exact detail, which is why Black Friday became an internationally recognized holiday almost everywhere else within just a few hundred years, except in the communist Soviet Union and its satellite states, such as Finland.
Right after World War II, the United States tried to spread the message of Black Friday by handing Europeans over 13 billion dollars in shopping money under the name Marshall Aid, or over 135 billion in today’s money. Almost every other country in Europe gladly accepted the aid, except little Finlandized Finland, which was afraid of angering its eastern neighbor.
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Even though the majority of our country’s political and cultural elite opposed, and still oppose, cheap shopping, Finland still had its own rebellious minority that, in defiance of Soviet power, tried to bring Black Friday to Finland.
Surely the most visible of them was the long-serving president Urho Kekkonen, who was a great admirer of Robinson Crusoe. According to the story, Kekkonen named his summer residence Kultaranta after the Gold Coast of Africa, because that’s where Crusoe went to buy slaves.
Because Daniel Defoe’s book had no pictures, and Kekkonen hadn’t exactly spent much time in Africa, he thought Friday was the same kind of native as in North America and often wore an Indian headdress. In reality, of course, Friday was found on an island in South America and was probably Mexican and wore a sombrero.
Black Friday, first invented in the 18th century, was already being brought to Finland in 1950 by then-prime minister Kekkonen, but the Soviet Union managed to stop the attempt by backing a locomotive drivers’ strike through the SAK, with the aim of disrupting the flow of goods in Finland. Kekkonen ordered the locomotive drivers into extra refresher military exercises and the strike was called off, but the damage had already been done, and manufacturers were no longer willing to bring Western consumer goods into the country.
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Elsewhere in post-war elite society too, a brave minority quietly campaigned for Black Friday. Artists Esa Pakarinen and Masa Niemi painted their faces black as a statement in a 1960 film and portrayed Black Americans.
They took a major risk, because back then all references to the United States were forbidden and, for example, Donald Duck was considered for banning for being too capitalistic. This direct statement in favor of Black Friday eventually led to both Pakarinen and Niemi dying later on.
Even today, the pro-Black Friday statement made by Pakarinen and Niemi would be pretty incorrect, but for slightly different reasons than 60 years ago. These days the origins of Black Friday are shrouded in mystery, which is why Pakarinen and Niemi can be misinterpreted as portraying a dark-skinned person in a humorous context. That is of course wrong, but then so is racism, and there’s nothing funny about that.
Pushed on by Pakarinen and Niemi, Kekkonen traveled to the United States in October 1961 to negotiate bringing Black Friday to Finland, but this quickly led to the so-called Note Crisis. In other words, the Soviet Union, worried about the spread of capitalism, sent us a note stating that all attempts to bring Black Friday to Finland must cease immediately.
Because US president John F. Kennedy was actively pushing Black Friday in Finland, KGB agents murdered him in November 1963 as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Social Democrats and Nicolae Ceaușescu. According to rumors, Finland’s first Black Friday was supposed to take place that same year after Kennedy promised to bring Japanese junk to Finland on NATO transport planes. Back then Japan was China and all cheap electronics were made in Japan. These days China is China and Japan mostly makes animated pornography.
Because of the Note Crisis and Kennedy’s assassination, no one tried to bring Black Friday to Finland again until Kekkonen dared to return to the United States in the summer of 1970. Negotiations were already well advanced when the communists struck again. This time Richard Nixon was framed as being involved in a spying scandal and was forced to resign. To be fair, the KGB did spare his life that time.
The last attempt to bring Black Friday into the country during the Cold War was made in 1975 by the internationally connected and multilingual foreign minister Ahti Karjalainen, but unfortunately the first Sorsa government resigned in spring 1975 after the Centre Party’s parliamentary group announced that cheap shopping was contrary to the legacy of Santeri Alkio.
Later in his memoirs, Karjalainen explained his decision to quit parliamentary work in the 1979 election mainly as frustration over the fact that, despite his repeated attempts, Black Friday had still not been brought to Finland.
One of the key starting points behind the founding of the original Valco, along with corruption, was the Social Democrats’ attempt to stop Black Friday from coming to Finland. This was to be prevented by producing bad and expensive electronics in Finland, so that people wouldn’t buy cheap and good foreign electronics.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it finally started to look possible that Finland too might get Black Friday. A clever secret plot was invented. To fool the communists, Finland would join the European Union, and Black Friday would be brought in that way under EU Commission Decision No 2257/94.
The genius of the plot was that the so-called Euro-socialists pushing the European Union were incapable of even imagining that, along with an international system of regulation and bureaucracy, there might also come a tiny whiff of a free market. Rumor has it that Paavo Väyrynen himself was behind the plot, which is easy enough to believe. Paavo is, after all, the most legendary politician in Finnish history.
Everyone knows the rest, because by now grown adults have already been born and actually remember things.
Martti Ahtisaari, who supported the European Union, was elected president in 1994. For decades he had represented the Social Democrats, even though he was really a reptilian planted by the Illuminati. Finland’s left-wing elite was so horny for the EU that it failed to notice Black Friday would come bundled with the union. Finland joined the European Union in 1995 and got Black Friday right after that in 2015. We still haven’t managed to get a market economy.
