Posted on 11/18/2012 1:17:47 PM PST by Libloather
Is Black Friday edging out Thanksgiving?
By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
updated 10:27 AM EST, Sun November 18, 2012
(CNN) -- The debate over whether the hand-to-hand-combat excesses of Black Friday represent a grotesque over-commercialization of the holiday season has lost its meaning.
The point is no longer whether or not Black Friday tarnishes the holidays.
The point is that Black Friday has become a holiday of its own.
It will arrive again this week, even as Americans are still sitting at their Thanksgiving dinner tables. Black Friday -- with its door-buster sales, hordes of frenzied shoppers shoving for position, employees nervously waiting for the onslaught -- has shrugged off the confines of its name and has now established squatters' rights on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...

Seems two shoppers in El Cajon are so worried about losing out on Best Buy deals, they began camping out this past Wednesday. That is, before security gave them the boot.
Total. Freaking. Morons.
I have a feeling that inventories everywhere are going to be quite a bit lower than years past. Maybe these campers are on to something. Decided lack of cheer, no?
When you don’t have a job but have plenty of free government cash and benefits flowing in, you have the leisure time to camp out for a few days to get a discount on your next HDTV.
After many runs...I finally realized sales occurred all the time.
Black Friday...Big deal....Just another sale!!
I refuse.

Get with the program, you iPhone and iAgra are what's important, not your family and thanking God for anything.
Now who do you suppose they voted for??? The one who thinks those who actually work should pay “their fair share”?
The battle against the family is edging out Thanksgiving.
Try not doing anything but rest on Sundays (like we are commanded to do), just for six weeks, and you will discern very well, the push to tear the family apart.
When you dont have a job but have plenty of free government cash and benefits flowing in, you have the leisure time to camp out for a few days to get a discount on your next HDTV.
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Exactly
If one’s gift recipients are greedy, yes. But greed can be trained out with true holiday joy independent of stuff.
Music, friends, food, time and attention to family.
Most churches have free or low cost choral presentations, for starters, which recollect the true spirit of Christmas. Kids are especially appreciative of such, as they are with time with their parents.
The battle against the family is edging out Thanksgiving.
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Well said.
What a hell hole! I won’t go anywhere near a store that day....in fact we mostly don’t do Christmas presents for ourselves anymore except for the youngest kids. Instead we adopt a family and give them what they need.
Ah, the voice of reason.
Even when I was a kid, the idea of camping out to "buy stuff" seemed manipulative and stupid. I honestly can't believe this entire charade still takes place every year.
No.
Here is my plan.
There will now only be 4 holidays.
One around now. Everybody gets time off paid.
One around March/April. Everybody gets time off paid.
One around July. Everybody gets time off paid.
One early in October. Everybody gets time off paid.
They will all be referred to as “The Holiday Season”.
No mention of religions. No remembrances. No mention of ANYTHING other than the Great Deals you can get.
It’s the same thing in Kanada where I’m from called Boxing Day. Idiots and morons camping out the day after Christmas at MINUS 10 degree weather for a DVD player at half price.
I’m waiting for Cyber Monday though. No need to line up with scum.
Thanksgiving used to be the quintessential American holiday. However, we have become a nation of whiners, ingrates, malcontents.
Going down to the crawlspace.........where is that FESTIVUS POLE ?
Could go with - all year - everyone gets time off paid.
Hussein's plan.
Those scumbags have totally no idea of the meaning of Thanksgiving OR Christmas! Of course, they voted for BO.
Well there is a viewpoint that even the Sunday sabath is deemed so yesterday, regardless of commandments or not.
Somebody needs to tell these people to get a frikkin’ life.
Have never been to a Black Friday and probably never will.
Yes, of course there is that viewpoint.
It’s not going over well.
Check out the bio of the Cure of Ars. All about France giving up on it two centuries ago. It didn’t work out for them.
We can bitch all day re people’s forgetting about God, but our Founding Fathers included Him in the development of the country.
All cannot possibly be lost if we remember that. he can get us out of this, but we have to cooperate and discern that when we do stuff just because everyone else is doing it, as every nine year old knows (used to know), it doesn’t make it less offensive to Him.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. No presents just lots of food, family, and football. Then the turkey coma follows. No way in heck would I ruin it with shopping. I don’t care if they were giving the stuff away.
I’ll stand down by the door and catch the grey men when they dive from the fourteenth floor.
Gonna wear no socks and shoes, with nothing to do but feed all the kangaroos
Yes, it has. “Black Friday” is not alone in moronic sales behavior. Did you miss the TV ads for “Veterans Day Weekend Sales”? Did you notice, that on Veterans Day, the cable-supplied music channels, in their ‘seasonal’ section, ONLY played Christmas music?
Thanksgiving Day, once set aside as a national, if not conducted privately, day of giving thanks for all the blessings afforded, to our nation, to our family, and to ourselves.
Now, in the day of Obamaphones, and in the time when the Democratic Party made it their “policy” to omit God from any and all published material, in the words of those of us who USED to live in New Orleans, and know what a ‘Schwegmann’s’ is (local version box store, but with more family atmosphere): “Ain’t d’ere no mo’!”
While I am all for saving a buck, there is no way that I will ever voluntarily share the same air with that scum.
No doubt those two fat cows are going to spend my money. -spit-
Honestly, now. You’re insulting the regular, everyday, freaking morons when you lump them in with these one-day-a-year Black Friday freaking morons. Just call them Obama voters. :)
I don’t know if you have school aged children or not...but let me catch you up on the current holidays:
Christmas = Winter Break
Easter = Spring Recess
Columbus Day = Autumn Break
I’m not kidding. This is what is published in the school calendar.
Fools. Sacrifice Thanksgiving with your family in order to save a few bucks. I’m sure the kids will understand in the future, how Mom or Dad missed Thanksgiving every year because they had to wait to go shopping. Plus, with a little searching, you can find almost the same exact “deals” online.
Same here. The bad part is dealing with my loudmouth, liberal, idiot obama-ass kissing relatives...
All righty. :)
“Move dat cracker outta de way so I can get to my cheap stuff! Keep Obama in president!”
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” Matt 6:24
What else is there to say. Of all the shopping days in the year these low IQ mutants would subject themselves to such cesspool scraping to 'save a few dollars'? --maybe.
I think for most of us it still is! The vast majority of Americans are home having dessert and maybe a turkey sandwich while those without a clue are off fighting one another for whatever. I refuse to believe they speak for America, and neither does the msm. It’s all hype to convince the dumb and dumber they really need to shop!
Stupid people are ruining America-——Herman Cain
He who dies with the most toys wins!
Ok, to nonshopping Freepers, I’ll try to explain ... I did get a few really good deals last year at Black Friday — a really cheap coat for my son, (50% off for a quality down coat) and a few great deals on sweaters I gave for Christmas. When you are the Main Shopper in your family ...(which is most likely the mom/woman of the family) you sort of are drawn to it for the deals.
It’s more a chick holiday than anything else. A few friends and I met at 3 a.m. at TGI Fridays in bewtween shopping for drinks ...it was really kind of fun. There wasn’t really any shoving or pushing ...just serious shop until you drop frantic rushing around type behavior. When you’re on a limited budget, the deals can allow you do a little more for your family than you regularly would have.
That said, I do feel the shoving, trampling scenes are quite revolting in some stores.


I agree, utterly pathetic!
In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the 4th century, Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that this date was chosen in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. But it (Christmas) was only a regular Feast Day and not a major Feast Day the Feast of the Epiphany was more important on the liturgical calendar.
During the Middle Ages, Christmas celebrations were more akin to Mardi Gras and were sort of a continuation and artifact of pagan Roman Saturnalia celebrations and Norse pagan traditions with much revelry and drunkenness. The poor would go to the houses of the rich and demand their best food and drink. If owners failed to comply, their visitors would most likely terrorize them with mischief (sounding a lot more like Halloween). Christmas became the time of year when the upper classes could repay their real or imagined "debt" to society by entertaining less fortunate citizens. Even in the early Victorian era when celebrating Christmas became more popular, carolers would sing in front of the houses of the wealthy and demand to be given some small token of money or food.
A glimpse into how Christmas was or wasnt celebrated during the 1800s can be found in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. Bob Cratchit has to ask to have Christmas Day off from work and Scrooge only does so very begrudgingly. The truth is while it was becoming more customary to give workers the day off on December 25th, it was not officially a holiday where getting the day off was expected. And near the end of A Christmas Carol; note that Scrooges maid comes to work on Christmas morning as usual. She is shocked when Scrooge gives her money as a token and in celebration of Christmas but is even more shocked when he gives her the day off.
As far as Thanksgiving, days of thanksgiving were recognized in various parts of the country on different dates, usually more aligned with local harvests times and were in some traditions, a day of fasting and prayer and reflection rather than a day of feasting and celebration. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress designated one or more days of thanksgiving a year but it wasnt until 1789 when George Washington proclaimed the first official national day of Thanksgiving, one that it was recognized as an official national day of thanksgiving although it was not a holiday as in a day that people stopped working/were given the day off.
It wasnt until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving - in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife and to heal the wounds of the nation. This national and federally recognized Thanksgiving was the final Thursday in November until 1939 when FDR moved the holiday up a week in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression (and that my FRiends is how Thanksgiving got mixed up with Christmas and became the kick off of the Christmas shopping season). In many Southern states however, Lincolns Thanksgiving was not celebrated or recognized for many years.
I would also note that today a lot of people other than retail workers work on Thanksgiving and Christmas think of police, firefighters, 9-11 operators, emergency utility workers, people in the military, hospital and nursing home workers
.
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