The holiday season is just around the corner, and in only a couple of weeks family members will be driving and flying home to be with loved ones for Thanksgiving.
This year retail businesses are opening as early as 6:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, creating major obstacles for those who have to work instead of enjoying quality family time.
Stores should not open on Thanksgiving Day because it turns a day that is supposed to be celebrated with family and loved ones into one that’s being celebrated with commercialism.
It was in 1863 that President Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving and it would be honored each year on the fourth Thursday of November.
Families were gathered, turkeys were stuffed and plenty of food was served.
Native Americans have celebrated the day since ancient times; to give thanks in hopes for a successful harvest season, a good growing season in the early spring as well as other good fortunes.
In recent years, Thanksgiving celebrations have moved more towards commercialism and further away from the day’s original meaning.
Thus, the Friday after Thanksgiving Day has become a popular opportunity for retailers to have sales and draw in customers, due to excited consumers eager to get a head start on their holiday shopping.
This day has become known as “Black Friday.” The term originated in the 1960s to mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The color black refers to older accounting systems when records were kept by hand. The color red indicated a loss and black indicated profit.
The day became even more popular when retailers began to realize they could draw big crowds by discounting prices. Many retailers began opening their businesses at 5:00 a.m. or even earlier to masses of anxious and rowdy shoppers waiting outside.
Last year, stores opened up as early as 12:00 a.m. Friday morning. This year, stores such as Best Buy, Sears, Wal-Mart, Target and Toys-R-Us will be opening even earlier this coming Thanksgiving Day in a race to launch their Christmas sales. K-mart stores announced that they would stay open for 41 hours starting at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday. PC Magazine reports that Best Buy stores in 47 states will be open from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Yvonne Cheng is a retail associate at a major retailer who feels the rush of the holiday shopping season forces her to cut her family time short.
“Because we are opening so early the next day with extended hours, I have to make sure that I am well rested,” Cheng said. “It’s also hard to plan trips to visit family that I have outside the Bay Area because it is pretty much mandatory to work the next day for the rest of the months of November and December. I feel bad for my counterparts that have family out of state, because if you work in retail, a holiday is not really a holiday.”
According to the Christian Science Monitor, 35 million Americans left home last year to shop on Thanksgiving and up to 29 million left home the year before. Sales and bargain prices are persuading both consumers and retailers to make sacrifices on a day that should be spent giving thanks with family members.
Retailers who work on Thanksgiving Day may be earning holiday pay but at what price? They will miss out on things like family board game night, grandma’s homemade pumpkin pie, a sister or brother who flew in from out of state and all other things that cannot be replaced with money. Working on Thanksgiving Day does not sound like a great way to make some extra cash; it sounds like a nightmare. Retailers can work extra hours during the year to make extra cash and cut out some extra family time on Thanksgiving Day. I’m sure families will appreciate their time together more than money.
“We work so hard all year around and deserve a break to celebrate Thanksgiving with our loved ones,” Cheng said. “Retailers are taking advantage of one extra day to make profit; if they wanted to bring more customers in without having to open up on Thanksgiving they should offer a larger discount on more items.”
The idea that stores need to open up earlier than they already are to jump-start the Christmas shopping season only leads consumers more towards the message that the way to show our loved ones we care is to buy their affection. This creates empty hearts, not only in adults but in children as well who have yet to learn the concept of showing kindness to others without the expectation of a reward.
Christmas shopping leads parents to feel like they have to buy their children Christmas gifts to receive their affection. In return, children are sad or upset if they don’t receive a gift, or even worse; if they receive a gift but it’s not the one they wanted. Children thus learn to associate material items as a means for affection instead of associating it with personable things such as kindness, generosity and goodwill.
This relates to Thanksgiving’s commercialism because the opening of businesses on Thursday morning with discounted prices persuades more families to buy Christmas gifts. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of the Canterbury for the Anglican Church, worries that this takes away from the meaning of the holidays.
“The secular over-the-topness, everything you have to have, new clothes you have to have, new this, new that, new the other, is ridiculous, it shouldn’t happen,” Welby said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor.
“It puts pressure on relationships because when you’re short of money you argue. You get cross with your kids more easily. It spoils life.”
Love is not something you can buy at Sears, Target, Toys R Us, or in Macy’s at 6:00 a.m. Thanksgiving day. Love is not a package you open up on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, and neither is friendship. Those two things can only be learned by spending time with one another and learning to care for each other from the bottom of our own hearts; not from the bottom of our wallets.
When wallets are empty, love and friendship is what we rely on to get us through our hard times. Without those two things, we would not receive any emotional satisfaction. What has this world come to; that we have to shop and work on a holiday that was originally meant to be celebrated with those we care about? Family time is not something that can be bought or sold. It is however, a necessity to our well-being and a necessity that should always come before commercial items.
