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
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on thanksgiving they will not be able to spend time with the ones they care about most. Therefore, retail companies who open on Thanksgiving Day are depriving their employees of meaningful bonding time with their loved ones, especially those loved ones who are in other cities, states or even countries. Thanksgiving has been recognized as a day of appreciation as opposed to black Friday being seen as a day to exploit capitalism.
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
holiday. “Black Friday brawls break out across the country, including several ugly incidents at Walmart and food court melee,” reads one article headline from the New York Daily News, published on the twenty-seventh of November 2015, illustrates the horrors black Friday shopping produces. This kind of savagery has even prompted an individual to start a website called “BlackFridayDeathCount.com” recording the deaths and injuries individuals have sustained on black Friday since 2006. Another article, published on the twelfth of November 2015, by Esquire.co.uk reveals one is more likely to die in a black Friday sale than a shark attack. The violence and barbarity caused by black Friday is exceedingly disrespectful to what the Thanksgiving holiday represents and should not be allowed to continue. It is true that retailers reap massive profits from their black Friday sales. The financial gains that result from such sales, however, do not excuse the brutality that goes on in stores. As a result, these profits may be lost in lawsuits filed against the company by a consumer who was assaulted on the premises, and also lost in repairing damages caused by reckless customers. Consequently, rendering the profits negligible. In conclusion, Store owners should not have black Friday deals available on Thanksgiving Day out of respect and empathy for their employees,
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
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.
The idea that department stores might be losing out to retailers like Amazon is not a new one. However, the extent to which one affects the other is not entirely clear. More specialized, non-department stores may also play a role in pulling department store sales downward. Clothing store sales, for example, grew slightly, by 1.2 percent, from January 2013 to January 2014 while department store sales declined. (Census Bureau, 2014)
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
Thanksgiving is a time to get together with your family and have a nice dinner. Then you play games, catch up, and watch movies. Thanksgiving is the time to be grateful for what you have. But wait; now you had to start dinner earlier and cut out catching up with your family. Now it’s time to get ready to go shopping for those deals you just can’t beat. Forget about being thankful for what you have; now it’s time to buy all the things you don’t have. Has Thanksgiving been taking over by Black Friday, or should we now be calling it Black Thursday? Stores should only be able to open after 12 am on Black Friday.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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