For hundreds of years Thanksgiving has been a holiday filled with traditions celebrating family and togetherness. The day after thanksgiving known as “Black Friday” is a day for shopping and taking advantage of greatly reduced prices. The recent decision by retailers to move Black Friday to Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, has caused quite a stir among many families. People have become upset over the decision to turn a day of gratitude and family, into another day of greed and violence. Retailers should not open their stores on Thanksgiving Day because doing so will cause many employees to miss out on spending a special day with their families, cause people to forget about the thanks and festivities that thanksgiving represents, and create more violence in stores and violence towards people. Many stores across the country are open on Thanksgiving Day, which obviously means people are working that day instead of enjoying the holiday celebrations with their families. According to a study done by Airlines 4 America, an airline industry trade group, 25.3 million people were expected to travel during the days surrounding thanksgiving. This implies many people were attempting to visit friends and family for the holiday season. If people are working long, stressful hours …show more content…
Turning this day into another black Friday will result in a loss of the morals and virtues thanksgiving teaches. Adults and children will cease to remember the values this holiday brings, and in turn will only view the day as one where they will receive lavish gifts for waiting in line for hours and trampling people. Therefore, it is ironic to have a holiday that revolves solely on buying things, replace a holiday that is based on being thankful for what you already own. Accordingly, having retail stores open on Thanksgiving Day will diminish the true meaning of the
Everyone loves to save money. In the tough economic times of today, every dollar counts. For some families, saving twenty dollars a week can mean the difference between having food on the table or not. Whether out of necessity or just the thrill of getting a good deal, American families have been relying on “big box” retailers for inexpensive products for decades. There really is nothing quite like going into one store and being able to buy clothes, groceries, auto supplies, pet supplies and items for the home. An entire day’s worth of shopping can be done in one place at a fraction of the time, at very competitive prices. These same stores also hire hundreds of employees from the community and are thought to benefit the city and county greatly with their tax dollars.
Over the years, the American department store has developed and evolved as not only a commercial business but also a cultural institution. While it has weathered many storms and changes since its inception and throughout history, its most predominant enemy has been a change in the lifestyle of the American people (Whitaker, 2013). As the customer’s needs and wants have shifted, department stores have struggled to keep up with demands. It has been argued that the decline of the department store has been ongoing for the last 50 years (Whitaker, 2013). This dissertation aims to understand how the department store has historically played a role in consumer culture and spending, and additionally, how this has evolved and changed in today’s retail market. Although department stores may not be able to take all the credit for inventing modern shopping, they certainly made its conventions and conveniences commonplace. They set a new standard for the way the consumer should expect to be treated, the type of services that should be provided, and the convenience that should attend the process of acquiring the necessities and niceties of life all in one place. They made shopping into a leisure pastime. This environment meant shopping was a means of freedom to look around, pick up objects with no obligations to buy. As one historian remarked, department stores: “encouraged a perception of the building as a public place, where consumption itself was almost incidental to the delights of a sheltered promenade in a densely crowded, middle-class urban space” (Whitaker, 2006). Although this perception and view of the department store has changed over the years, this paper aims to follow the trail of how and why that happened.
Thanksgiving Day is a day of family, food, and giving thanks for the blessings in life and yet some people believe Thanksgiving to be a prep day for Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. The focus of Thanksgiving shifted from family bonding to incessant shopping. This trend of taking away from the hours of Thanksgiving in order to shop is enraging. It steals away from family time for the shoppers and the employees. Employers threaten workers that if they do not work on that certain holiday, they will be fired. Black Friday should be kept to Friday instead of moving in on my family time. The whole culture of Black Friday has become repugnant and unnecessary.
Thanksgiving is a holiday in the United States, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November every year. Although the way holidays are celebrated over time, thanksgiving has always been a holiday feast. However, Thanksgiving is more than just eating food together with your family. For instance, some families do charity work for the poor people and create a Thanksgiving dinner for them, other family’s watch sport in addition to the food that they eat together. One part that is common at almost every Thanksgiving dinner is the type of food that is served. Families in the United States have celebrated Thanksgiving for hundreds of years, but the way it is celebrated has slightly changed from the first Thanksgiving. To be able to explain
Imagine having to work on thanksgiving. Not only do those people miss out on Black Friday, but also miss out on time with your family. They also get to go to work more than likely sleep deprived, deal with unpleasant customers, and constant lines. Curtis West worked as a Macy’s employee. In his 24 years of work for them he had to work a total of 19 Black Fridays. He said it wasn’t bad when Black Friday started off, because it usually meant going in at 5 am on Friday. Now for sto...
During fall, the leaves fall, the temperature drops, and people sit around a table and say what they are thankful for. While we are consuming pounds of turkey and stuffing, the Pilgrims are to thank for the annual feast. Because the meaning of this holiday is to not stuff your face with endless amount of carbs, we should be reminded of how grateful we are for what we own. Thanksgiving was a very memorable time in U.S. history.
Starting the day right after Thanksgiving, everybody’s mind is set on one thing: Shopping. People young and old wake up early in the morning to start their holiday shopping. Everyone is looking for the perfect gift for their family and friends. But nobody cares to think of what the employees at their favorite stores think and feel. Shoppers just come inside and turn the store upside down.
The crowd of people surging forward and shoving recklessly, the wave of humans in a chaotic race to grab their favorite items on “sale”. Black Friday, the day when items are sold for their actual price, is the day which stores are stripped of their merchandise. Every man for himself. However, there is one day in the world when stores are filled with a serene aura. There are no incoherent shouts of children that cry for toys and seemingly endless snakes of people impatiently waiting for their turn at the register. As the activity of the people at stores decline, so does the line of profit of corporations, industries, and companies. In a way, people are cleansed of the economy’s stronghold which demands them to spend their money to no end. The immensity of annual spending can not be fully counteracted by just one annual Buy Nothing Day, but this single day still holds the ability of reminding citizens to lessen their reliance on consumer products.
It is seen in everything from the hoarding of material objects to the destruction of friendships, both of which are popular themes when regarding the topic of Black Friday shopping. Black Friday has become Black Thursday, a trend which has only shown up within the last decade. The great American holiday that is Thanksgiving is celebrated because of our gratefulness toward all that we have, a holiday that is meant to be spent gathered around a table of our loved ones. However, the retail holiday that consumes the day afterward has begun to overflow into our gatherings, and it is due to the greed of the American people. Were it not for the market’s demand for earlier sales, stores would not open their sales on Thursday nights. Everyone would simply wait until early the next morning to start off on their shopping extravaganzas, and the sales themselves would likely be far less violent as
There is belief that the term Black Friday originated in Philadelphia and was coined by police officers after dealing with large crowds of shoppers who frantically awaited the Thanksgiving sales. Since the early 2000’s, when Black Friday’s popularity began, most major retail stores opened their doors to customers at 6 a.m. Around 2011, many stores began pushing their opening times to the wee hours of the morning. Furthermore, Walmart along with many other large retail stores made the drastic decision of opening on Thanksgiving day; shoppers waiting to get a bargain are seen making line earlier and earlier each year. Cyber Monday which is the online version of Black Friday, occurs the Monday after Thanksgiving. It has recently grown over the past few years with major retailers like Walmart offering customers deals all week long. These sales events have skyrocketed in the past few years and for many people it has changed the way they celebrate Thanksgiving. There are various people who adamantly refuse to go shopping on Black Friday, but for others, the holiday symbolizes getting a good bargain on items they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to purchase throughout the year.
When comparing two different ways of shopping most people do not even think about the difference, they do both and not even realize it. In today's society people shop while at work, after work and on the weekends, whenever time permits. Stop and think how can I get more time in the day for family or just myself? The best way to figure that out with all the recourses we have is to go into a store and spend time looking through racks and waiting in endless lines to just purchase something. I compared going into a store verses online shopping; to see which one will save you time and money.
With the staggering money results, one would say it's almost idiotic for stores not to open earlier during Black Friday. My counter argument is, is it really? In 2011, Wal-Mart's fiscal reports showed they made $419 billion that year, take in affect of the slight depression the United States suffered, and the currency fluxuation, and the gap isn't all that large. Plus, stores like Wal-Mart would save millions on holiday pay for the 200 million (plus) employees they employ. Shutting down for a few hours would not destroy businesses like
Man, I can't believe Thanksgiving is over already, and Christmas is just around the corner. It seems like this happens to me every year. I'll have thoughts of a terrific Christmas meal at some point in August, with all of the turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, etc. But for some reason I forget about it again until a few days before the holiday, which is weird because I'm on top of every other holiday and event throughout the year. Party planning when your life is busy with work and kids can be extremely difficult.
Ordinarily, people witness vulgar acts and retaliate accordingly. While shopping on Black Friday, it is not uncommon to watch someone steal something out of someone else’s cart, causing an unruly argument in the store, or witness someone flipping another person off while driving down the
When comparing two different ways of shopping most people do not even think about, they do both and not even realize it. In today?s society people shop while at work, after work and on the weekends, whenever time permits. Did you ever stop and think how can I get more time in the day for family or just myself? The best way to figure out with all the recourses we have; still most of us go into a store and spend time looking through racks and waiting in endless line to just purchase something. I compared going into a store verses online shopping; to see which on will save you time and money.