"This year's early start to Black Friday proves Thanksgiving as you know it is gone."

[WilliamPitt]

CNN: "The first takeaway from Black Friday 2013: Thanksgiving is changing. For all the talk of shopping boycotts -- on the grounds that family values exceed the desire to save a few bucks -- American consumerism has triumphed. The crowds that typically appear before dawn Friday showed up at what's traditionally dinnertime on Thursday."

http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/29/news/economy/black-friday/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

"Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come, nor care beyond today."

- Thomas Gray

[Blaukraut]

1. So in a few years, stores will open at noon on Thanksgiving

The turkey industry will not be amused

[tina tron]

2. Thanksgiving is dead

It was killed this year in the name of greed. Consumerism and all it's vulgarity has killed it. But look what we got out of the deal: Black Thursday/Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday!!! Yeaaaa for money!

[elehhhhna]

5. Only if you let it be dead. It's a choice.

not dead here in Sugar Land!

[LordGlenconner]

9. That's what I'm thinking

I'll be celebrating it next year, if that's okay with everyone.

Good lord. The hyperbole addiction here is at epic levels.

[earthside]

3. Thanksgrabbing is a Retail Success

This report and the one I haves provided a link to below, indicate that despite what many Americans may say about 'family values' and about how our society is too materialistic, in the end the highest value is shopping and acquiring.

From all the news items I'm seeing on news sites about the Thanksgiving early store openings --- well, the retailers' scheme has been a pretty big success.

It means, of course, that the trend will be for the traditional Thanksgiving Day feast to diminish even further in importance and for the the last Thursday in November to become just the first day of a four day long bacchanal of spending. Who doesn't think that next year we will see a lot of Thanksgiving Day noon store openings?

There is something rather surreal and disturbing about this behavior; it is as if we have really lost part of our soul in a kind of dystopia of cheap satisfaction derived from accomplishing minimal happiness with minimal effort from items of minimal value.


BLACK FRIDAY LIVE: Naysayer Couldn't Resist Deal
Associated Press/NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=247738722

[99Forever]

4. Perhaps for some.

But not for all. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with family and not a single one of us had any plans to indulge in the ugliness of the Black Friday consumer idiocy.

[RagAss]

6. The elite class loves it when the poor fight for scraps.....

It has been entertaining them for centuries.

[TBF]

11. ^^ this ^^ nt

[rusty fender]

7. Thanksgiving is now

The 'Hunger Games' of shopping.

[Johonny]

8. I am shocked people use their time off to go shopping

next people will use their weekend to go to the movies, use their night off to go to a restaurant etc... Pretty much whenever you have a massive amount of the population on Holiday they will have $ and time to spend doing things like shopping. This is about as shocking as finding out people go out on a weekend.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. When it becomes just another shopping day, fewer people will have it as a day off

and eventually it will become a holiday only for those with jobs with great benefits. Veterans Day, Columbus Day, Presidents Day are already just quasi-holidays. At the rate the idea of "holiday" is eroding they'll be archaic within a generation.

[Blanks]

12. The assertion is as ridiculous as the 'war on Christmas'...

When my oldest son was young we went to a hotel restaurant for thanksgiving dinner.

When I was single I didn't have any problem working at the convenience store on thanksgiving because everyone needs something - or a break from the family, so they run out and buy a cup of coffee. Working kept me from being alone.

Not everyone has a bunch of people to share their thanksgiving.

Sure, it's a shame when people HAVE to work on a holiday when they'd rather be home, but that hardly means thanksgiving as we know it is over. Some people like to shop instead of hanging around with their families - it just isn't that big a deal.

[jazzimov]

13. Honestly, who didn't see this coming?

Every year, the stores opened earlier and earlier on Black Friday. Eventually, they had to crossover to Thanksgiving.

[Major Hogwash]

14. "Thanksgetting" is what someone else here said it will be known as from now on.

"Family values" was the biggest hoax the Republicans ever foisted off on this nation.

[nyquil_man]

15. As it is, the Christmas season starts after Halloween.

The holidays and presidential primaries just get longer and longer and longer and longer...