Black Friday opposes Thanksgiving values

By: Steven Goodman – Asst. Opinions Editor

Another Black Friday has come and gone. A day of massive sales and camping out before a store opens or, as a meme I saw put it, a day we go and spend a lot of money on new merchandise right after saying how thankful we are for what we already have.

I’ve never seen Black Friday as a massively crowded, panic-inducing shopping day, but, then again I’ve also never camped out at a store to be the first one inside. I’d much rather wait until the enormous crowds are gone and get whatever is left.

What I’ve never understood is how Black Friday has slowly crept into the late hours of Thanksgiving over the past couple years. Stores slowly made their way from opening at midnight to 10 p.m., 9 p.m., 7 p.m. and even earlier to the point where there’s just enough time to eat as much food as possible before running to the nearest shopping mall.

Soon, we’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner in line waiting for the doors to open.

At least this year a decent number of stores rolled forward their times to open on Friday rather than before.

Although midnight is still fairly close to Thanksgiving it doesn’t turn the holiday into an eat-and-run affair.

Many of the stores that chose to stay closed the entire holiday cited caring about their employees as their reason.

This should always be their motto, and it shouldn’t take a few years of opening stores on Thanksgiving to rediscover these words.

My favorite was Patagonia that, when asked if it would be closed on Thanksgiving, responded with “It’s a holiday, we’re closed!” Shouldn’t that always be the case, though? Apparently not since a Google search doesn’t pull up multiple lists of stores closed on the holiday.

Other stores, like Radioshack, decided the opposite of Patagonia, apparently.

A Radioshack memo said the store missed out on a lot of opportunities by being closed on Thanksgiving and, imagined it would be a good idea to stay open the entire holiday.

Thanksgiving’s always been a day of being thankful for what we have; it’s even in the name itself.Just because someone works for a retail store doesn’t mean they should have less time with their families just so the company can make some extra money.

With stores constantly opening earlier and earlier, it seems that Black Friday will roll into Black Thursday or possibly even into Black Wednesday, and, then, who knows if the earlier hours would stop?

If a store absolutely has to stay open longer for Black Friday deals, why not go through the weekend? It seems to me that would be the better solution.

After all, you can shop just about every other day of the year, but Thanksgiving only comes once.