Black Friday and the War on Thanksgiving

[Sen's Revenge]

Originally Posted by 33girl

It's not a "war" if two parties won't both engage.

If people didn't shop on Thanksgiving, the stores wouldn't be open - and I would guess that a fair portion of those shopping are "low wage workers" themselves. (That little attempt to make this a class war doesn't quite work, but they tried. Good try, HuffPost.)

Not only that, maybe spending a day with family and gorging isn't everyone's idea of fun or something that contributes to everyone's physical or mental health. I worked the last 3 Thanksgivings. I didn't mind in the least. Before we work ourselves into an outrage, maybe we should consider if for many people, there is anything to be outraged about.

I think you and I talked about this last year on FB and I totally agree.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Sen's Revenge

I think you and I talked about this last year on FB and I totally agree.

As much as I'm a Thanksgiving fan and hate seeing it swallowed up in Christmas, I agree too.

[chi-o_cat]

My significant other & I don’t exchange gifts between ourselves or family members, however we do participate in a gift drive through a local radio station where you “adopt” children and are given clothing sizes and a “wish list” (a secular version of the Salvation Army Angel Tree, basically), and last year we did do some crazy late-night Black Friday shopping to try to get some deals on clothes and toys for our list kids. Well, okay, we might have also bought some stuff for ourselves…who can resist a $9.99 Crock Pot?


I’m not really a family holiday person in general, so I have to admit, if there are great sales, I’m definitely interested in going out shopping at 6PM on Thanksgiving rather than waiting until the middle of the night. I’m curious to see what Kohl’s is going to do.

[ASTalumna06]

The problem comes when people are forced to work on the holiday when they don't want to. Yes, I know people who experienced this last year, because they were the low man on the totem pole, so they had to "pay their dues" by working the holiday. It wouldn't have been a problem if they knew in advance that the store would be open that day, but in the case of one of my friends, he found out by reading online that their store would be open, and he found out a few days later that he'd have to be there when the place opened on Thanksgiving night.

I guess I don't really see the point of Black Friday anymore? Many reports say that it no longer helps the economy the way that it used to, more and more sales are lasting throughput the holiday weekend, and online shopping is more popular than ever. When will this become just like every other shopping day of the year?

The real annoyance is with Christmas taking over the last 4 months of the year. Why are there Christmas decorations up in the mail in September?! That may be a different discussion for a different thread, though