Devouring Thanksgiving: How American Consumerism’s Insatiability is Killing the Nation’s Most Humble Holiday

I’ve always found the tail end of the fourth week of November to be a spectacularly ironic period of time. It’s during this handful of days that Americans celebrate two holidays based on opposing concepts: Thanksgiving and Black Friday.

 The former is a celebration that revolves around our thankfulness for all that we have, while the latter is essentially a commercialized version of Pamplona’s running of the bulls, featuring hoards of shoppers storming malls and retail giants in a grand search for new “stuff” at a discounted price.

It’s a 48 hour contradiction that Middle America abides to year in and year out. One day, we’re reflecting on how lucky we are to have a roof over our heads, a table full of food, and a family that loves us. The next day, we’re charging over feeble old men and fretting mothers so that we can fling ourselves onto the last $200 HDTV that Best Buy has in stock.

And yet, in an amazing defiance of logic, these two polar opposites have peacefully sat side by side for a half century, without one of the holidays spilling into, or cancelling out, the other. However, in the last few years, major retailers and commercial behemoths have begun to chip away at this fragile harmony by expanding on Black Friday and the deals that come with it. Now, Thanksgiving and its key tenets are in jeopardy of being erased completely.

From 1961 to about 2007, retailers demarcated the early morning hours on the day after Thanksgiving as the start of the Christmas shopping season. But as the economy took a nosedive in the latter part of the 2000’s, CEO’s and consumer analysts saw a dire need to hammer home the importance of Black Friday deals to unnerved holiday shoppers. Therefore, they started opening up stores around 4 or 5 am to give consumers more time to shop for desired products. Then, when these early openings received positive reviews from shoppers, many corporate bigwigs began to wonder: What if we opened our stores up even earlier? Will consumers be receptive towards us if we encroach on the national holiday of thanks?

Unfortunately, the answer to that second question is “yes”. Last year, for the first time ever, many major retailers began to open up their stores at midnight on Black Friday. The resulting spectacle was televised, and it was disheartening: A procession of avid shoppers, more hungry for door buster deals than turkey and cranberry sauce, skipped out on their families and Thanksgiving dinners, opting to instead camp outside of their local Walmarts and Targets for the big midnight openings. And, in one brutish display of primal behavior, a shopper at a nighttime Walmart opening in Los Angeles injured 20 people by pepper spraying them in an attempt to close in on the store’s Xbox 360 display.

Now, with Thanksgiving 2012 fast approaching, word has leaked out that many retailers plan on opening their stores before midnight on Black Friday. That’s right: This year, Black Friday will commence before the last piece of pumpkin pie has exited your stomach and begun its journey through your intestinal system. Sears and Walmart have announced that their stores will open up at 8pm on Thanksgiving, and Target will open up their stores an hour later, at 9pm. The Disney Store has even announced that they will begin offering Black Friday discounts on their online store the Monday before Thanksgiving. So this year, Thanksgiving’s emerging struggle for public relevance will be confronted from all sides.

Some may view the growth of Black Friday as basic corporate pragmatism, and that its expansion into Thanksgiving isn’t a major issue so long as the public doesn’t object to it. But there is an issue here, and a very serious one at that. It’s no secret that material desire is a key part of capitalism. It even plays a role in Thanksgiving, what with its traditional gluttonous meals and expensive parades that feature massive floats and pop star sing-alongs. However, it’s important that we remember the historical and societal significance behind Thanksgiving, and we should fight to prevent it’s dilution at the hands of corporate profiteering.

In the 1600’s, when the pilgrims fled religious persecution and arrived on a relatively uncharted continent, there was little concern about obtaining new clothing and supplies. Happiness to them was about finding fertile soil that could feed them as they rebuilt their lives, lives that would no longer be tormented by suppression from the Church of England. And when President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a federal holiday in 1863, I highly doubt extending the Christmas shopping season was on his mind when he said that the holiday should be a day of “thanksgiving and praise”.

This corporate movement to absorb Thanksgiving and turn it into a four day shopping weekend is also tacky and even immoral on a certain level. Most full time retail and department store employees only get a handful of days off each year. By turning Thanksgiving into a required working day, companies are tearing workers away from their families during a holiday that is meant to recognize togetherness and thankfulness. And it’s not like these employees can simply refuse to come into work either. They’d promptly be fired and replaced with temporary seasonal workers.

Black Friday has a place in our modern society, no doubt. But that place needs to be limited to Black Friday. In a financially driven society, Thanksgiving gives us a rare opportunity to extend our hands to others. It’s a holiday that focuses on canned food drives, cards being sent to troops overseas, and families reconnecting after being apart for long periods of time. And even though the value of those things can’t be statistically analyzed in a quarterly report, they hold considerable emotional value to the people who are positively affected by them.

So this Thanksgiving, reject Black Friday’s attempted incursion into your planned celebrations. Tickle Me Elmo and the Wii U can sit on store shelves for one extra day.