How commercial can we make the holidays?

Grey Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. All over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Really??

REALLY!!

I remember a time when Thursday was reserved for Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving only. No shopping, no waiting in line for the stores to open. It’s all for a quick buck on the stores part or a “huge saving” on the part of the consumer.

I get it, kind of. Saving or trying to make money in an economy that’s been in the dumps for a few years makes sense. But at the expense of a holiday that’s traditionally been reserved for time with friends and family, the comradery of preparing and eating a meal with loved ones and thanking the world for what we’ve been given is too much for me.

It takes the tradition out of the holiday. It makes it cheap.

I read an article about this lady and her uncle waiting in line at a Target in Texas four hours before the store opened. Their friends had to bring them leftover Thanksgiving dinner. The two family members were the only ones waiting and all for a $149 flat screen television. Maybe I personally don’t understand the value of a television because I don’t own one, but I hardly think saving $50-200 on a television is worth leaving a home of family cheer for the sidewalk of Target on the day that’s been celebrated since before the United States became a country.

Now that Black Friday has turned into Grey Thursday and stretched out into Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, I believe Thanksgiving takes the award for the most commercial holiday of all. All of it in the name of gift giving for Christmas. As if it wasn’t bad enough to hear Christmas tunes on the radio as Halloween turned to Day of the Dead and be forced to look at lights and displays advertising Christmas decoration specials in the box stores, now we have to shop before the calendar hits the day after Thanksgiving.

My mother has always participated in Black Friday sales. It was sort of a tradition after I graduated high school for the girls, my sister, mother and I, to hit the shops as a family and buy clothes, etc. together. I’ve never participated in Black Friday without my mother, because I guess it’s sort of a tradition for me to do it with her. I also know I don’t really have enough patience to hit a store with 1,000 other people by myself.

And I understand it’s the biggest sales day of the year for retailers, but why stretch it out?

Are we that desperate as a country? Is the situation that dire? Or does it show capitalism at its worst? I guess I don’t have an answer to any of those questions because I only know what the media tells me like everyone else. But I also know that I roll my eyes when I heard about the sales.

I know that it irks me every time I hear a new name for a sale day around Thanksgiving and I wonder when enough is enough.