What Is Green Monday? The 5 Best Deals from the Sleeper Shopping Day

If you didn’t get a chance to splurge during Black Friday or Cyber Monday in November, don’t fear: Another manufactured if snappily named day of deals is here.

This one goes by the name of Green Monday, and is essentially the same exact thing as Cyber Monday. This lesser-known online shopping holiday takes place every second Monday in December. That’s around the time when you’re sitting around and beginning to feel a creeping sense of dread about the fact that you haven’t bought any gift for your friends or family yet.

Like every other deals day, online retailers advertise wicked discounts on all the gifts you might want to get your buddies.

How did Green Monday get started?

This day of online savings was coined two years after Cyber Monday by e-commerce giant eBay, back in 2007. The original idea was meant to give shoppers at least 10 days for their purchases to get delivered back when one-day shipping wasn’t a reality. Now, the made-up holiday has just become a day of savings (and a truck load of earnings for retailers).

“Historically Green Monday has been one of the biggest shopping days of the year for eBay,” Scott Cutler, Senior Vice President of eBay Americas, said in a statement. “We see a sense of urgency from shoppers to check people off their lists during this time of the year.”

Cutler isn’t kidding around. On December 10, 2007, it was reported that U.S. shoppers spent a walloping $881 online. This huge influx of online shoppers prompted companies to make Green Monday a thing, even if it hasn’t caught on in the cultural consciousness like its Thanksgiving-time cousins Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The sales strategy seems to have worked, seeing as it was reported that $1.6 billion worth of online sales were made during Green Monday in 2016, a figure that will almost certainly keep growing as Amazon goes all in on the day.

Where to get the best deals?

If you, like the online shoppers of yesteryear, have yet to start buying your holiday gifts search no further. Here are five of the Internet’s best bargains:

• eBay is dropping new deals on things like bicycles to tablets every hour. So keep an eye out. You can pick up this Lenovo laptop for 44 percent off, with no shipping fees.
• Target gives you $20 off every $100 purchase on select items. The retailer won’t let you save more than $100 though, so shop responsibly.
• Levi’s is giving shoppers 40 percent off on everything on their site. Just use code “green40” at checkout.
• Pacsun has slashed all of their online prices in half, plus no shipping fees.
• Toys”R”Us is offering 15 percent off select items and free shipping with orders over $29.