Thanksgiving is a holiday for giving thanks for the preceding year, for the loved ones around you and now for cheap stuff. We all know some incomplete history about how Thanksgiving began, and naturally our celebration of the holiday has changed throughout the years, but it’s beginning to lose its meaning.
It is loosely understood by most people that Thanksgiving comes from a meal held between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. Its origin traces back to a celebration of the successful harvest after days of fasting. There remains a large amount of debate about the date of the first Thanksgiving celebration, but George Washington proclaimed the first nationwide Thanksgiving celebration on Nov. 26, 1789.
Thanksgiving is currently observed on the fourth Thursday of November and means something different to everyone.
As elementary school students, we might have viewed Thanksgiving as just another break from school, having not always understood why such a day is celebrated, as it simply marked the day our parents started asking about our Christmas lists.
As we grew older and progressed from elementary school and into middle and high school, family time might have become a little annoying. We still looked forward to the days away from school, but maybe not as much to Thanksgiving Day itself because it meant we had to spend the entire day with our family and not our friends.
This phase quickly faded for high school students spending their first semester in college and finally realizing the true meaning of family. We jet away from campus as fast as humanly possible to spend every waking moment with the people we might have previously seen as annoying. Thanksgiving finally makes logical sense as a day to give thanks.
Unfortunately, the black shadow surrounding the following Friday is slowly smothering Thanksgiving. Companies in a war for Thanksgiving sales are pushing each other to make the immoral decision to keep their employees stocking shelves instead of stocking their stomachs.
Target, Sears, Macy’s, Kohl’s and J.C. Penney will open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving while Best Buy will open at 6 p.m. and Walmart will start sales at 6 p.m. For some retailers, last year was the first year they opened on Thanksgiving, but the earlier openings did not have an effect in overall holiday sales.
From 2010 to 2011, holiday retail sales increased 5.6 percent, but from 2011 to 2012 they only increased 3.5 percent. Without an increase in overall holiday sales, is opening early really worth it?
Marketers try to develop their companies to represent something existential, but with these earlier opening hours the companies are becoming more inhumane. A company is a separate entity from its owners and managers, but that doesn’t mean it needs to disregard personal characteristics. It seems that companies think they can force employees to work because there isn’t a person taking the rap. Recent news headlines have been saying thing such as, “Walmart to launch Black Friday sales earlier.” If the name “Walmart” was replaced with a person’s name that person would be seen as insensitive and unsympathetic.
Knowing a person was individually behind the statement would change people’s perspectives and possibly cause them to disassociate with him or her. As stores prepare to open earlier than ever before, people have the opportunity to choose whether to associate with that person or punish them by simply enjoying some football with family instead of spending time in the parking lots with patrons.
There hasn’t been enough time to collect data on the stores that open on Thanksgiving compared with those that don’t, but I hope the stores get punished for their decisions.
This Thanksgiving, don’t change your routine just because that TV might not be on sale tomorrow. The memories you can create with loved ones will last forever.
