Why is it only one day a year you should spend with your family?

If people want to shop, the let them shop.

It's like shops being open no later than 4pm in the UK on a Sunday, because fucking religion. What the actual fuck? Religion makes my shops close?

The fuck is that.

Edit: America is crazy.

Don't most places give people double pay for working on major holidays? I think that is a pretty good compromise.

Im like this, you got people working thanksgiving but on the other hand I just got back from Powell station and I dont need to go out tomorrow anymore. So Im sort of part of the problem. I kind of think the natural evolution of black friday is stores individually start their discounts earlier and earlier in the year and on seperate days as xmas takes up more of the calendar and then "black friday" becomes a more manageable thing for consumers and store employees.

And some of you basement monkeys need to understand a lot of people live far away from their family so yes, a special set aside day where most places are giving people the day off is something a lot of people need to actually see their family. It has nothing to do with religion or lacking family values, it has to do with everyone being on the same page about giving this particular day off, one of the only non-religious holidays people get time off for.

I have never had the chance to experience thanksgiving. While i was in college most people just went home and the only one left are just the international students. From what I have gathered, its the same type of celebration as Chinese new year? Just hang with family and eat until you feel disgusting. Sounds fun.

Also since we are on topic of holidays, what the hell is a ground hog day? I read up on it on Wikipedia but now I am more confuse than before.

All you need to know about Groundhog Day and also time travel is covered in the film Groundhog Day.

I completely agree. Starting to open the retail doors for Black Friday on Thanksgiving is crazy and disgusting. I feel terrible for the people who have to work through a holiday they should be spending with their families. By the way, who in the hell is going shopping all about in town on Thanksgiving? Seriously?

Now the online deals are another story. I'm really happy I've already been able to get all my shopping done on Thursday and can relax the rest of the weekend.

Your question is worded poorly, and in turn, it defeats the purpose of all this. Look at it again and you'll see the problem with it.

"Should" makes it seem like people use this holiday specifically as a way to say "I don't have to spend time with my family during the year because I can do it at Thanksgiving."

You disregard a few things:

1. Family that lives out of town, where it can be difficult to find time where schedules line up to see each other as often as you'd like
2. Family that lives out of state, where seeing each other often would involve a fair amount of money that you may or may not have due to living expenses as they already exist
3. Generally just not being able to see each other as much as you want

See, the way that everyone keeps making it sound, it's as though we are all sitting around and saying "we don't care about seeing our family until Thanksgiving." Instead, they need to be looking at these specific types of things and realize that Thanksgiving is that one day a year...ONE DAY A YEAR...where we get the opportunity to be off work, come together and see each other, and enjoy our time together.

Therefore, I would like to counteract your question with my own:

Why is it such a bad thing to set one day out of 365 each year aside in order to allow family members far and near to get together, feast, and enjoy the company of one another?

Also, if a shop wishes to close at 4:00pm because religion, they have the right to do that...just the same as a shop has the right to stay open past 4:00pm because not religion. That statement you make is a rather intolerant one. You may not agree with religion, but there are plenty others I'm sure that don't agree with not religion.

Oh? Where do you work where they let you have the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off in exchange for working you on Thanksgiving?

@jakob187: Shops don't have the right to stay open after 4 because religion. That was my point. Trading standards dictate that the latest you can be open on a Sunday is 4pm, regardless of your religious practises. The law just stems from religion.

To your long winded bit, I was just making fun of Americans, that's all.

I live 2 and half hours away from home at school. I work at Walmart here and just worked from 3pm - 1:30am on Thanksgiving and then tomorrow on black friday I have to work 2pm - 11pm. I'm not going to see my family and friends until Saturday afternoon.

I'm too tired to read all these comments, I'm just putting my situation out there to maybe add to the discussion. Black Friday/ Black Thursday FUCKING SUCKS SHIT and it ruins my holidays every year. Just remember that these stores are creeping further and further into Thursday afternoon because you customers are willing to show up for it. Stop shopping on Black Friday. Stop. Fucking stop. Please stop. Please? I'm so tired. please

I also dislike how early the shit starts. Would it really make a difference when the sales start? If you have crazy deals people will flock to you. What the hell do they really gain by starting on Thanksgiving?

This is a fantastic essay illustrating how sociologically controlled people are. (And when faced with two sociologically controlled destinies-- Thanksgiving and Black Friday, the average human is unable to choose.)

One question to pose to ourselves is.. What if Thanksgiving didn't exist? And what about all the Thanksgivings that don't exist? Do we miss those nonexistent holidays? We should create them in order to fill the gaps? Can we celebrate them whilst knowing no one else does the same?

I guess the point about everyone's schedules is a pretty good point. There can be rest assured knowing everyone in the family is free on Thanksgiving, as opposed to any other arbitrarily appointed date.

Yeah man, me and some friends drove to a friend's house around 9 pm at night to eat just a little bit more pie and try and see the rest of our friends after stuffing our glorious american faces with pounds of turkey, And the Best Buy we saw from the freeway was already packed and open and people were running in and out. We couldn't stop laughing.

I think it's dumb that stores have started opening on Thanksgiving within the last few years, but I'm not too torn up about it; I'm sure I'd feel differently if I had to work. What I think is infinitely dumber is the way a bunch of people in this thread are replying with "LOL JUST MOVE YOUR THANKSGIVING TO A DIFFERENT DAY LOL" like that's a realistic option.

To use myself as an example, I saw between 30 and 40 family members today, and that was only one side of my family. My parents are divorced, so I haven't even seen my mom yet this week. The only day I have off this week is Thanksgiving itself. Telling someone to "just reschedule their Thanksgiving" is probably one of the least well thought-out responses possible when your family get-together depends on 10+ schedules and not just your own.

Yeah black friday sucks. Always has. I worked 1-10 yesterday, missed thanksgiving dinner, and then had to go to bed immediately because I'm also working 8-4 today. I'd be all for having thanksgiving on another day like some people suggest, but i don't control the day the rest of my family drives down from Wisconsin. Oh, and I'm also working all weekend so its not like I have a chance to anyway. Luckily I get holiday pay, but a lot of my friends that I work with don't simply because they haven't been at the store long enough but still get scheduled for this crap anyway.

@jakob187: You speak truth. Usually, if I do Black Friday stuff, I just swing by Gamestop later on Friday, like around noon or in the afternoon. That's as crazy as I get.

It's funny that people act as if rampant consumerism is an America-only thing.

Why is it only 1 day in a year, you don't have weekends or something?

Also just don't work on Thanksgiving? Just because it's black Friday doesn't instantly mean you have to. Unless you have a shitty boss and can't afford not to work that day. But then that's more of a personal workplace issue. If you have to make a decision between making more money and family time in your own business, that's on you. And again just spend time together on a regular weekend, or any other holiday.

I'm fine with 8PM onwards and maybe even okay with 6PM (my family does Thanksgiving early, so I figure others probably do, too, and are finished well before 6.

However, one thing I want to mention is that I have noticed a lot of people throwing a fit about retail stores being open but don't think about people working to bring them the Macy's parade they watch, or the NFL they watch, or the restaurants or grocery stores they go to...or maybe even the people keeping Amazon and NewEgg up despite all the heavy traffic...

Well Ten like most others your assuming that you get some sort of fair trade here? I work thanksgiving, will be going into work today in 30 minutes, and work all weekend. It isn't because I have the "option" either. Hell my workplace uses holiday pay like a gun to your head and actually mentions like 4-5 times EVERY DAY that if you go over on break even 1 minute or show up late even just 1 minute they won't give you your holiday pay. Not only that but they apply that to the day before and after the holiday too. So in a "two day holiday" thanks to crap friday that also means I can't take any of those days off because that means I didn't work it and if I didn't work it you clearly don't deserve holiday pay. So for me I can't "get together" with anyone until Sunday at the earliest and that requires calling out, meanwhile everyone else in my family already had their thanksgiving 3 days ago, so it isn't like there is a point to calling out by then because they already all left.

i would maybe argue suck it up for one day and it's not something you should act so dramatically about, but on the flipside i don't really have family/obligations so i can understand losing that time to spend with your loved ones and relax. i can count my blessings as i now work in my business' corporate office and only have to pull an 8 hour shift today (and also have tomorrow off), but i've worked plenty of admittedly crappy black fridays and i think i've paid my dues.

not that today won't be hectic and frustrating as fuck...

@karkarov: So again my reply to that is in my previous post. Don't work thanksgiving. If you want the extra money for holiday pay that's your decision, no? If your workplace has you forcibly work Thanksgiving that should be a public holiday, then you have my condolences, that really sucks.

I had to work last night, work in retail. My store was dead and I tend to have more of a problem with how long we're open rather then being open at all. Our Pharmacy closed at 2 (we were open until 10pm) and from then on it died down a lot. There were long periods of time where there was just no one in the store at all. To me for my store, I just find it pointless and a waste of time/money. I honestly can't imagine there is that much of a difference between how much everyone that worked yesterday is being paid and how much our store made for the day.

I did not voluntarily work on Thanksgiving, but thankfully my Mother was able to move dinner to Sunday. Just sucks because for months I have been missing out on a lot of family stuff because conflicting schedules and mainly work. I haven't seen my Parents for probably a half a year or more because of this and that is definitely not by choice. I am generally in favor of people having off on the holidays because of situations like mine, some people really only have time on the holidays to see people they care about.

I think it's more that for a lot of people, myself included, the kind of stress and frustration and anger generated by a holiday seems completely unreasonable. People being furious, so emotional they are completely beyond rationality, right at the edge of their nerves, ready to have a complete emotional breakdown at all times and why? Because people decided this weekend is special because reasons. Everyone decided that this day would be extremely important for no reason, and if people don't follow the tradition like it says, oh there will be hell to pay. That's not a reasonable thing.

Let's all have this one day where we all try to do the exact same thing, and then be really surprised when there's problems, and be really upset that it happened today, the special day where everything is supposed to go exactly how it was planned. As opposed to every other day, where nothing goes as planned, and no one cares.

You can go shopping with your family on thanksgiving. Its a lot of fun.

Were it not for very specific circumstances I probably would have missed thanksgiving this year and probably wouldn't have particularly cared. Holidays are stressful. Shopping, for me, isn't.

If you look at it another way, shops being open on thanksgiving also means that there are more people working, and for some people thats a more important endeavor (I would certainly prefer working on a holiday than celebrating it).

I think all of us are in agreeing that black friday has fuckin gotten past annoyance and insanity the past 20 some odd years. Its also ridiculous that stores are opening way earlier then noon on Thanksgiving to entice shoppers. After working retail for a few years I told myself I'd never do that bullshit ever again, that bullshit being going to a store and waiting in line for a doorbuster deal. I'd rather sleep-in on turkey-coma then wait in line and freeze / get trampled to death.

I would say that regardless of importance/opinion of Thanksgiving, it's sad to see people act how they do over saving some money. People act dispicable over needless stuff.

I totally understand where you're coming from, but in my family, these are people I see three times a year (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas). We do (occasionally) have other family get-togethers, but because they aren't on holidays, people can't drive/fly in or take off work to make it to them. The last one I went to that wasn't on a holiday (housewarming party this summer)? About 10 people made it to that one. I haven't seen one of my cousins since Christmas of last year because she can't get time off. Since then she's gotten a new job, moved, met a dude, gotten married, built a house, and moved again (to a different city). We're a large Italian-American family where seeing each other and being close is very important, so that kind of shit is rough.

THEY HAVE TO MAKE TIME-AND-A-HALF ON THE DAY THEY SHOULD SPEND LOSING OUT ON A FULL DAY'S PAY!

I understand your point, I can't stand how consumerism has taken over the holidays. I'm not a Black Friday shopper, but I'm okay with stores opening.

The holiday season is the most depressing time of the year for people without close loved ones. If seeing a movie or snagging a great deal or even working makes it a little less lonely who am I to judge.

Yes, some people will abandon their families to try to snag deals, but that's their choice. I'll choose to celebrate the holidays my own way and they'll choose to celebrate it theirs.

If you really wants to get together with your family (and family-in-law), it could also be done outside of thanksgiving. Maybe not as easy but still possible. The thing you're getting angry about is just consumerism in general and poor(?) family values, but people still have the right to exert both. Not spending time with family on thanksgiving doesn't automatically make you an asshole and you shouldn't judge those that move up thanksgiving plans for Black Friday.

Nothing is more American that punching a random stranger in the throat over a parking space at Wallmart.