Should the US get rid of Thanksgiving Day?

Seeing as how stores don’t seem to respect this national holiday, and keep pushing to open on the very same Thanksgiving night, it would make more sense to just eliminate it and just turn the whole week into Black Week.

According to About.com, as many as 200 retailers will have Thanksgiving Day hours this year. But last minute Thanksgiving dinner shopping is not the issue here. The problem are all other retail stores opening as early as 8pm on the very same Thanksgiving night, which in my opinion is disrespectful when this is an observed national holiday, but also the tradition is a DINNER.

Retailers like hh gregg, Sears, Kmart, Toys ‘R Us, Walmart will be opening their doors at 8pm today. Kmart is doing something weird by closing at 4pm, and then reopen from 8pm to 3am on Black Friday, just to open again at 5am. Walmart is opening from 8pm today to 10pm tomorrow, that’s 26 hours straight. I don’t see the point on having a day called Black Friday if these retailers will keep pushing it back to the previous day.

Stores that will not open on Thanksgiving include Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s, but they will open their doors promptly at Midnight. While it sounds more “decent” on their part, the tradition is to open around 4 or 5am on Black Friday, so this means their employees will have to be back on the clock one or two hours before they open, that means 10 or 11pm on Thanksgiving night.

If you have ever worked in retail you will know Black Friday is not paid as a holiday, and the employees will probably be rotated so the stores don’t have to pay them for overtime. The stores always win.

And that’s the reason I think we should either get rid of Thanksgiving Day celebration and make it a whole Black Week. Even better, let’s push Black Friday forward into the next week, so starting from what is now known as Cyber Monday could become Black Friday week and we leave Thanksgiving alone.

I applaud what Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island lawmakers did by prohibiting big retailers from opening on Thanksgiving Day. As P.C. Richard & Son posted on its Facebook page, “retailers who choose to open on Thanksgiving Day or night show now respect to their employees or families, and are in total disrespect of family values in the United States of America.”

I hope lawmakers at some point ban retailers from opening on Thanksgiving, only supermarkets should be allowed until the afternoon for last minute dinner shopping. All other retailers should wait until the next day.