It’s Black Friday, the official start of the holiday shopping season. This week’s newsletter pulls together everything you must read before filling up your shopping cart — even if we all know the big sales started weeks ago.

The holiday shopping season is starting earlier and earlier, said R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at Placer.ai, a foot-traffic analytics company. 

Launching these promotions in October and early November allows customers to secure deals earlier on in the year and avoid crowded stores.

On the actual day, some shoppers might get aggressive over scarce items, which means fellow customers might not want to come back to the store for everyday purchases, said Nathan Yang, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

And because items go out of stock, as you would expect, retailers end up with disappointed customers, Yang said.

“Perhaps what retailers ought to be doing is more targeted types of promotion since they have so much data,” Yang said. 

Although “Black Friday creep” has chipped away at the actual “holiday’s”  importance, and some might still associate it with in-store brawls, Black Friday still has psychological appeal for many families. 

“I think it is still an important day on the overall retail calendar,” Hottovy said. 

For some, it conjures the image of sick days spent home from school. For others frat parties and keg stands. It’s also right at home in those all-American ‘90s buffets that used kale as decoration rather than food.

I am, of course, talking about Jell-O. For me, the jiggles of Jell-O remind me of all of those things — but it’s also an image of home and family. 

My Grandma Dawn (as she will introduce herself, no matter her relation to you) makes her signature Lime Jell-O Dessert each year. It’s a recipe that Grandma Dawn got from her mother-in-law, and it helped her stretch her dollars while providing her children a sweet treat. (We put the recipe at the end of this article if you want to try it yourself.)

“I do remember using Jell-O a lot when I got married in ‘63 and had three kids to feed, and we were trying to make something pretty,” Grandma Dawn told me. “You had to have the colors and stuff.” 

She could dish up Jell-O for dessert after Hamburger Helper, another food item she chose for its convenience and affordability (one that’s making a comeback these days). And it’s not a coincidence: Jell-O has, for years, marketed itself to busy, working-class moms. But that wasn’t always the case.

Before Jell-O brand gelatin came, well,  just gelatin. One of the first recorded recipes for aspic, gelatin’s savory cousin, appeared in the late 1300s in the French cookbook “Le Viandier.”

Gelatin is derived from the structural protein collagen, which is found in the skins and bones of animals like pigs and cows. Those animal parts are boiled down until collagen can be extracted and formed into a gelatinous concoction. This process is incredibly time-intensive, though — it could take two days of work or longer to produce calf’s feet jelly, as it was called.

Because it took so long to prepare, gelatin was a dish reserved for the elites. And it would often be highly ornamental.

“That was a statement, just the way, if you bought a Porsche or a BMW today, or a Rolex watch, people would know you were rich,” explained Carolyn Wyman, the author of “Jell-O: A Biography.”

But then came the Industrial Revolution, and with it, more industrialized foods. — like instant gelatin.

Lots of families hit the movie theater around Thanksgiving. Isn’t it odd there aren’t that many films that actually take place around Thanksgiving, the way there are for Christmas or Halloween?

I count a few family dramas like “Pieces of April,”“Hannah and her Sisters” and “Home for the Holidays.” There are goofy, gory Turkey Day slashers from the 2020s and 1980s. Then there’s “The Last Waltz,” Martin Scorsese's concert film memorializing The Band’s farewell performance on Thanksgiving Day, 1976. We pulled this week’s selection from the soundtrack.

Theatergoers in 2025 have more options than ever, including musical events like Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” launch party, anime blockbusters,rereleases of classic films, opera performances and even television shows like “The Chosen” and “Stranger Things.”