Who needs to give thanks when you can stand in line for 15 hours for a $2 waffle maker? Within two years, Black Friday will begin on Wednesday. Book it.
EDITORIAL: Thanksgiving gradually disappearing
THIS PAST WEEK may mark the gradual disappearance of Thanksgiving.
It will be eclipsed by the lengthening shadow of Black Friday.
Thanksgiving will still be around, but not so you’d notice it.
Pilgrims and Indians are being replaced by door busters and rolling sales.
The traditional Thanksgiving dinner is less a family feast than an opportunity for carbo loading for the rigors of the morrow’s shopping marathon.
The weekend after Thanksgiving has always been the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, but the Christmas ads began right after Halloween with darn little mention of Thanksgiving.
America’s hypercompetitive retailers began hyping their Black Friday sales, and America’s hypercompetitive shoppers responded.
Stores began opening earlier; for a few brief years, 4 a.m. Friday was the tacitly agreed-upon opening time.
But then some stores moved it back to midnight, others followed and now some are opening at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving Eve. Some just stay open all day Thanksgiving.
In a similar race to be first, shoppers began lining up earlier too.
One Best Buy banned tents in the waiting line. Undaunted, the hardy shoppers froze in the open.
THE OCCUPY movement urged its followers to boycott big-box chain stores. Blocking access to the stores would have been too dangerous because the 152 million people expected to hit the stores this past weekend would have stampeded right over them.
Three years ago, a Wal-Mart clerk in New York state was trampled to death when he failed to get out of the way of onrushing shoppers fast enough.
The Tea Party responded by calling for a “BUYcott,” needlessly because the Black Friday bargain hunters were too preoccupied to notice.
Near Los Angeles, a woman pepper sprayed a horde of rioting shoppers when they got too close to her purchases.
A WITNESS told the Los Angeles Times that a pushing, screaming crowd tore open plastic-wrapped pallets of goods, trampling the merchandise in their frenzied haste for bargains.
One viral video showed shoppers rioting over $2 waffle makers.
One woman began losing her pants but she wasn’t going to let go of that waffle iron.
There’s no way the Thanksgiving poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish” can compete with that.
Scripps Howard News Service
