ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, November 24 2011

Boycott 'Black Thursday'
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Goodbye Thanksgiving. Hello Black Thursday.

When President George Washington proclaimed America's first official Thanksgiving Day on the heels of a Revolutionary War victory in 1789, and President Abraham Lincoln revived the tradition amid the Civil War in 1863, neither could have predicted what the holiday would become by 2011. They could not have envisioned the 46 million turkeys that Americans will devour today or the estimated 42.5 million travelers who will take to road and sky this weekend to join loved ones for the big feast. And they surely would not have expected that this national holiday dedicated to gratitude would devolve into a mere prelude for the shop-til-you-drop insanity of Black Friday.

Bemoaning the degrading effects of consumerism and "Christmas creep" on our Turkey Day celebrations has become a tradition all its own in recent years. But this year, the backlash against retail madness has hit fever pitch, thanks to the critical mass of big-box store executives who have decided to dispense with Thanksgiving observance altogether and turn our national holiday into just another shopping day.

Lest you suspect that greed is at work in those decisions, rest assured that it is not.

Sure, the corporate honchos who have opted to open their stores on Thanksgiving night will be settling into peaceful, turkey-induced tryptophan comas right about the time their employees are rushing out to work all-night shifts among wild-eyed deal hunters as likely to trample them as wish them a happy holiday. But it's not about the money. It's about sacrificing for the greater good — of customers, the economy and, of course, Christmas itself.

"Our customers told us they would rather stay up late to shop than get up early," said Wal-Mart bigwig Duncan Mac Naughton, in a press release explaining the store's decision to open on Thanksgiving night. Wal-Mart Turkey Day doorbusters are not about gaining market share but about helping hard-working Americans "give their families the Christmas they deserve."

Wal-Mart's competitors have echoed those selfless sentiments. Kohl's has framed its Thanksgiving-night opening as a gift to the store's customers, an altruistic and apparently insomniac lot who "love to give" and are "happy to save" even at 2 a.m. Toys "R" Us, which will open at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving, said the Turkey Day hours allow customers "even more hours to save." And Target justified its dismissal of protest petitions from some 200,000 employees and shoppers by noting that its new Thanksgiving hours will spare customers the pain of "getting up in the middle of the night" for early-morning doorbusters. Now the poor wretches can simply skip sleeping altogether. As Macy's spokesperson Martine Reardon explained to the Associated Press, "People want to shop through the night."

That's news to many shoppers, who have loudly lamented the new Thanksgiving hours as an assault on our national traditions and an affront to the rights of retail employees. Some have promised to boycott their favorite stores and refrain from their usual Thanksgiving-weekend shopping sprees in protest — or at least, to confine their conspicuous consumption to those stores that stick to the traditional Black Friday script, such as Nordstrom and JCPenney.

Still, somebody is planning to shop tonight. Despite our complaints about corporate greed, consumerism and our national addiction to debt, a survey from the National Retail Federation found that 152 million of us are poised to stampede stores this weekend, with significantly more Americans planning to "definitely" join the holiday weekend shopping fray this year than last year. As for those much-loathed Thanksgiving hours, they likely will become the new normal — another fact of our frenetic, modern lives over which we wring our hands while scrambling to find our keys so we can get to the mall.

It's ironic that a holiday born amid scarcity and premised on appreciation for blessings already received has morphed into the opening act of an orgy of acquisitiveness, the gateway to an entire season spent scrambling to buy things we don't need and can't afford. Odder still is the fact that so many of us bemoan this fact yet hop on the treadmill anyway, convinced that we have no choice but to spend the next 30 days exhausting ourselves and our bank accounts in an endless quest for more stuff.

Perhaps this Thanksgiving is an opportunity to challenge that conventional wisdom. By staying home tonight, and refusing to patronize retailers who fail to respect one of our most beloved holidays, we can strike a small blow against the crazy-making trends we typically lament to no avail. We can do our part, however modest, to observe Thanksgiving as it was meant to be observed: as a day of rest from labor, unhurried fellowship with loved ones and gratitude to God for blessings not sold in stores.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.