Let's Stop Flipping Thanksgiving the Bird

I had a great Thanksgiving yesterday.  The meal I cooked wasn't up to my standards, but it was more than made up for by the good company and conversation around the dinner table.  However, you couldn't watch anything on TV without being bombarded with Black Friday ads, most of which were really about Thursday night shopping.  Thanksgiving has been turned into yet another American "shopportunity."

We Americans have joined corporate America in flipping Thanksgiving the bird.

Sure, there have always been stores that stayed open during Thanksgiving, but they were grocery stores that stayed open to give an assist to harried home cooks trying to put on a great meal for their families.  They weren't clothing and electronic stores trying to push Black Friday ever more closer into to Thanksgiving or just straight up intruding on Thanksgiving.

After Black Man Not Blogging (BMNB) and I drove ahead of our Thanksgiving guests after dinner to help them find their way out of the maze that is our subdivision, we decided to drive by our local Target to see if people were that bereft of family or food that they would camp out at 7:30 pm on Thanksgiving just to shop early.  They were and they did. I thought people here would have little bit more sense, but our Target had a line snaking around the front of the property.  They were probably amped up on lattes from our local Starbucks, which closed for only four hours on Thanksgiving and re-opened Thanksgiving evening to service Black Friday shoppers.

BMNB is especially offended by the Black Friday tsunami into Thanksgiving because he really enjoys Thanksgiving.  One, it's a food holiday, and BMNB loves food.  Two, it's a family holiday, and he loves family even more than food.  Three, Thanksgiving usually falls on or around his birthday.  It's a joy trifecta for him.   We couldn't even focus on preparing for and savoring Thanksgiving because all the stores skipped straight from Halloween to Christmas.  Thanksgiving was just a passing thought for retailers.  I couldn't even find decorations to make a decent Thanksgiving centerpiece because they were all gone the week before Thanksgiving.

Give me a flippin' break!  Are flat screens and iPads more important than family, food, and fellowship?  Really, America?  Really?

Although I think Black Friday is an exercise in wretched excess, I'm willing to overlook the hype and the overload of ads if we just keep Black Friday to Friday and leave Thanksgiving alone.   Corporate America can't succeed in pushing Black Friday into Thanksgiving if we just refuse to leave our dinner tables and our guests. 

Let's stop flipping Thanksgiving the bird, America.

P.S.  Happy 50th Birthday, BMNB!