Black Friday has arrived. In case you don’t know, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. It is dubbed as such because traditionally it’s the day that retailers go from being in the red to being “in the black,” or earning a profit.

But the day after Thanksgiving — when so many people rush to the malls to begin their holiday shopping — should be called “Red Friday” for consumers. That’s because for many of them, it’s the day they move into the red or dig deeper into debt because they shop till they drop with money they don’t have.

I recommend reading “Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For a More Joyful Christmas,” by Bill McKibben (Simon & Schuster, $12).

This is one of my favorite financial books because it helps me remember that Christmas is not about the presents you give.

In fact, McKibben encourages families to spend just $100 for everybody at Christmas. Now, before you roll your eyes or dismiss this recommendation as absurd, take a moment to consider the following:

• The average household has close to $9,000 in credit card debt.
• The average gift list consists of 10.5 people and shoppers allot about $50 for each recipient, according to a recent holiday shopping survey by MACResearch.
• In analyzing shopper types, of the 10.4 percent of those surveyed who see themselves as “money-is-no-object holiday shoppers,” 60 percent earn under $50,000 a year, according to the MACResearch poll.
• Holiday gift-buying is the No. 1 category that consumers overspend on each year, according to InCharge Institute of America, a nonprofit personal finance education and credit counseling group.
• In a holiday spending survey commissioned by Consolidated Credit Counseling Services Inc., 54 percent of respondents said they were still paying off debt from last year’s holiday season.

Just take a moment to think about that last point.

In one survey, more than half the people interviewed were still paying off holiday debt from the previous year. That is insane.

In helping start the hundred-dollar holiday movement, McKibben was simply trying to show people how to have a more joyous Christmas.

“Christmas had become something to endure at least as much as it had become something to enjoy,” he writes. “Instead of an island of peace amid a busy life, it was an island of bustle.”

And why $100?

“There’s nothing magic about a hundred dollars,” McKibben says. “The hundred-dollar goal seems to work well as a check, a way of saying that your commitment to a better Christmas goes beyond merely complaining or telling yourself that this year it will be different.”