Holiday Shopping: My Rant

When exactly did shopping become the new American pastime? Probably when retail stores flipped the script and started opening on Sunday’s – back in the 70’s. Before then, all we had to do on Sunday was rest, relax and recharge… Same for the Friday after Thanksgiving, before the day turned “black.” Those were the good old days.

When I was a kid, I remember watching TV the day after Thanksgiving and seeing commercials for Barbie’s dream house and the GI Joe action figure sandwiched between Tom & Jerry, Magilla Gorilla and Top Cat. I sat there with a pen and paper (even then I was organized, LOL), and wrote a list of all the things I saw that I wanted. But it was in my living room, in my robe and slippers, not at Toys R’Us midnight madness… This Thanksgiving Friday, I followed my usual regimen, building up a carb-induced coma in my robe and slippers, like all the years before. I opted to celebrate good old Thanksgiving, rather than the new Black Friday – Cyber Monday spendapalooza. Apparently, my family was the only family missing from the mall.

According to the National Retail Federation, a record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, (up from 226 million last year) with the average holiday shopper spending $423. $423 multiplied by 247 million people… That’s $ 104,481,000,000!! So what about the fiscal cliff? The recession? The economy? Unemployment? Did those realities fade away with the cranberry sauce? Or maybe we’re in denial, and we’re just not as worried as we should be…

If you’re my age or older, you probably remember when Thanksgiving was Thanksgiving and Christmas was Christmas. Other than the appearance of Santa Claus at the end of the Macy’s parade, they were separate. Now, the poor folks who work for stores like WalMart and Target, have to cut their turkey short and get to work. That’s just crazy.

But what does that SAY about us? Not as individuals, but as a society? Are we done with giving thanks for all our blessings, and our friends, and our families? Are we not grateful for surviving the dramas we all deal with day to day, but for surviving the sicknesses, the wars, and the storms? Since when is getting a great bargain on an item that was overpriced to begin with, exchangeable for spending time with your loved ones and making memories that will last you a lifetime? Years from now, will you really treasure that thing you bought that you can’t even remember, or will you wish you’d spent more time with those loved ones who aren’t here anymore?

My daughter commented recently about how Thanksgiving is the forgotten holiday. Right after Halloween, retailers start switching pumpkins for Santa decorations, and cable starts promoting its countdown to Christmas, running Rudolph and Frosty shows non-stop until December 25th… creating fertile soil for advertisers to seed our minds with visions of doorbuster sales that will grow their pockets with our money…Essentially creating a 60-day buildup to a 1-day holiday. Aside from that fact that Christmas for many is one of the holiest days on the calendar and should have more time… We’ve also reduced Thanksgiving to a 10-minute dinner so that we can rush out and spend, spend, spend.

In his recent article on Forbes.com entitled "Why Walmart is Not Evil For Opening on Thanksgiving," Richard Saintvilus wrote, “Walmart’s plan is to open after 8PM – long after every one has eaten and certainly after second and third portions have had enough time to be digested. Still this is nothing new as the company also opened on Thanksgiving of last year – except this time it wants to open two hours earlier. Again, I ask where is the crime?”

If you know anything about me, you know that I love to shop and over the years, I’ve single-handedly kept several retailers operating in the black.  So I’m not vilifying Walmart (or my beloved Macy’s) and I’m certainly not saying that shopping is a crime.  I think its great that the economy is seeing and hopefully benefitting from the millions of shoppers spending billions of dollars and putting thousands of people to work in the process.  (NBC reported that cyber-giant Amazon hired 50,000 workers for this holiday season alone). 

I’m just saying…  Can we rethink the Thanksgiving Thursday night shopping thing and spend (pun intended) a little more time on Thanksgiving just giving thanks?