Thanksgiving Day: How Black Friday chewed up – and spat out – American tradition

Forget about spending time with family and friends, corporate America wants you to shop till you drop

It’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving, when American families gather around a roast turkey and an array of bizarre, high-sugar side dishes.

My mother-in-law will make carrot and pineapple jelly, along with candied yams. Sweet potatoes, butter and brown sugar with melted marshmallows on top. I pass on most of it.

But there’s a new American tradition at this time of year. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the cruelty of the retail trade has also become an annual event, when more liberal Americans bemoan the fact that many of their countrymen will be forced to work on the last Thursday in November. Black Friday has become Black Thursday, and in some cases Black November.

Even retailers that don’t open on Thanksgiving, like Costco and Barnes & Noble, will still be open early on Black Friday, and like most stores will only close for two other days a year, Christmas Day and Easter Sunday.

There’s good publicity in closing on Thanksgiving, which they milk for all it’s worth. But it only means being closed one day a year more than the bad guys like Wal-Mart and Target, whose doors will be open on Thanksgiving.

I don’t get the fuss. Yes I understand their point, that American retailers should perhaps close their doors and give their staff the day off. Unpaid, naturally. But why moan about Thanksgiving getting ruined? If you work in the retail industry, all holidays are ruined anyway.

Forget Boxing Day. The day after Christmas is a working day for almost all Americans, unless it happens to fall on a Sunday, but the stores will be open bright and early Sunday or not.

Good Friday is regular Friday, somewhat bizarre in light of how religious much of the United States is. That All-American holiday, July the 4th, is always a normal work day when you’re in retail servitude.

The American calendar is awash with public holidays, all of them with good patriotic names like Memorial Day, President’s Day, Columbus Day and so on. Even Martin Luther King’s birthday is a public holiday.

But good luck getting the day off work. No chance, not when you work in a store and there’s a sale to tie into it! Nothing honors American soldiers quite like a Memorial Day sale. In fact, the only way to make sure you get your public holidays off is to work for the government.

Stores open because people go to shop at them. If it wasn’t worth their while they wouldn’t do it. Most of them don’t give people stacking shelves or manning the tills paid vacation, so a day off means a day without pay.

Me, I’m past caring when a store opens. If it means missing out on candied yams, I might even sign up for it myself.