Posted on 11/17/2013 4:59:33 AM PST by Kaslin
Did you hear the tragic details? You know – that dreadful news about Americans working on Thanksgiving Day, and the efforts to boycott the companies for whom they work?
“Because I believe in family, I pledge to NOT shop on Thanksgiving” the much-shared Facebook “avatar” reads. “If I’m shopping, someone else is working and not spending time with their family. Everyone deserves a holiday.”
It’s awful, isn’t it? People being productive on a holiday, providing their services to customers and making money in the process - what has happened to America?
I understand people feeling as though the historical and intended purpose of Thanksgiving Day is getting lost in our current cultural milieu. And I understand how it may feel as though retailers are simply exploiting the holiday, diminishing its actual significance, and using it for their own selfish purposes.
But before you re-post the avatar, or click “like,” or vow to “punish” the stores that will be open on Thanksgiving Thursday, why not consider a few details? In a culture given to people emoting, lashing-out – and boycotting – perhaps we’d all do well to think for a few moments.
If you’re convinced that working on Thanksgiving Day is a grave sin, then consider your own plans for that day. Might you be planning to spend some time watching football? If so, I wonder if you’re outraged at the NFL for exploiting our sacred holiday.
And what about the players – and the play-by-play broadcasters – and the tv producers and technicians and stadium parking attendants and security officers? If you’re watching football on Thanksgiving Day, all those other folks are working and NOT spending time at home with family. Don’t they deserve a day off, like you do?
And if you’ve decided that retailers should not do business on Thanksgiving Day – well, I presume you think that’s true of all retailers, including gasoline retailers – right?
Certainly you wouldn’t want a gas station employee to be away from their family on Thanksgiving Day just so you can be afforded the selfish convenience of filling-up on your way to your celebration - right?
And so what if you have car trouble or a power outage or – God forbid – you’re the victim of a crime, an accident, or a natural disaster. You won’t expect anybody to answer the phone if you call 9-1-1 or the towing company, because you won’t allow yourself to interfere with somebody else’s family plans – right?
Could it be that this backlash against retailers is yet another case of selective outrage in America? Retailers are the target of people’s anger right now, but most of us don’t really want everybody to avoid working on Thanksgiving Day, or any other day for that matter.
And how about this: if I’m shopping in a store – on Thanksgiving Day or any other day – then, yes, somebody else is working. And given that roughly one-third of the entire population of the United States is not working at all right now; and that the country’s labor force participation rate is at a thirty-five year low; and that the consumption of the federal Foodstamps and Medicaid welfare programs is at an all-time high – I’m thinking that if somebody is ambitious enough to work, even on Thanksgiving Day, then that’s a good thing.
And guess what? All this “holiday shopping” zealotry is not new. Converging Thanksgiving Day, the “holiday” season and retail shopping all together has a long history in the U.S., dating as far back as the 1920’s with President Herbert Hoover. Given that he and his successor President Franklin Delano Roosevelt both governed during a market crash and the “Great Depression,” they both saw the overall economic benefits of robust retail sales.
FDR is generally credited with forging the so-called black Friday “tradition,” and retail businesses has been perfecting it ever since. The recent developments with Target Stores, Toys R Us, Macy’s and Bed Bath and Beyond amount only to the latest chapter in a long American story. And in case it matters, Hoover was a Republican and FDR was a Democrat – so the whole holiday shopping craze, distasteful as it may be to some, is actually very “bi-partisan.”
Instead of being outraged with retailers who are trying to make money, have you considered being thankful that millions of our fellow Americans are willing to work on Thanksgiving Day, and in all different lines of work? And how about being thankful that our economy is still so incredibly functional that most of us have plenty of products from which to choose on the store shelves, and we can shop – or not shop – on most any day of the week?
Instead of outrage, let’s give thanks. That’s the best possible way to observe the holiday.
Well, I’d say there are a lot of people that would rather go shopping than hang around for whatever Thanksgiving means now.
Times change and it’s possible that people are not celebrating the way they used to.
I’m going shopping. Why not? I work half-day on Black Friday so it’ll be fun.
The thing is, you can’t control everyone.
I’m without family this Thanksgiving. Sacrosanct? Am I supposed to go to church?
I’m going shopping ...
OK, you got the traditional stuffed turkey, just like the one William Bradford served up to those Indians as well as some good old American pies. But what is that other stuff? To the left of the turkey is what looks like something ordered from a take-out Chinese restaurant - egg rolls and peking ravioli? Then to the left of that looks like the world's biggest meatball sub...what the heck? And check out Grandpa, he's got his hand rapped around a big old jug of moonshine. Ain't nobody touching that without his say-so.
My company requires it because the customer requires 24/7 attention...
“TV and internet must work all the time Thanksgiving and Christmas day be damned”.... The problem is customers pushed and the companies caved.
Its a rabbit hold that you can never leave.
I think that’s what ours do as well. I just work in activities but glad I will get to be with the residents who don’t have family to come and visit.
Yes, people did work on Thanksgiving in the past. My father did it. I’ve done it sometimes. My children have done it.
But it was not typical for everyone to work on Thanksgiving. When the biggest employer in the US requires every employee (except upper management) to work that day, and all the competitors fall in line too, pretty soon no one is home on that day. It’s a day like any other. And another of the traditions that unite us and make us unique as a nation falls.
Are you saying that you think this is a good thing? Really? You want to see most employed people working on that day instead of bonding with their families, attending church, sitting by the fireside, and giving thanks to God for His munificence?
The traditions of Easter have gone. The Fourth of July as most of America knew it is gone. No one wears poppies and few people hang out flags on Veterans Day anymore. They’re talking about closing school for Eid-al-Fitr, whatever that represents. Our country is severely challenged by destructive forces and we need to cling to our memories and traditions. The last thing this country needs is to give up one more national custom.
Everyone isn’t working on Thanksgiving, only the people in the retail and service sectors, and not even all of them,same as always.
Actually I think Target was first, WalMart followed, but Target isn’t the Great Satan so nobody cared until WalMart went for it. Mind even when they weren’t opening on Thanksgiving a lot of WalMart employees were working the day to get ready for Black Friday, because that’s how it works in retail.
I don’t think it’s a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing. This is how reality works, if you’re in the retail or service sector you have a bad job where you get paid poorly and work holidays. If you don’t like it get marketable skills and get out. I did 6 years in fastfood before I finally grabbed myself some ambition and went back to school. They can make the same move.
Most employed people AREN’T working that day. Actually we probably don’t have any higher percentage working it than we did in the 70s, the only thing that’s changed is that the Great Satan is open, so now business as usual is suddenly evil. If WalMart wasn’t opening nobody would care but people would still be working.
Actually I think all those things are the way they’ve usually been. I’ve never cared about Easter, 4th of July has always been the week before my birthday and not terribly exciting, I never even heard of the poppies for Veterans Day much less worn one. The country is working the way it always has, you’re just finally noticing, most of these traditions aren’t really traditions, at least not for the whole country. The Norman Rockwell version of reality has really represented a small part of the country, the people who both can and want to live that life, and it’s never really been the majority. But somehow people were willing to pretend, even as they didn’t lead that life they liked to lie to themselves and say they were. The big change now is people are finally starting to see that Rockwell was full of beans. The REAL Thanksgiving celebration for most folks is argue with the family, don’t go to church, don’t have a fireside to sit by, give thanks to nobody, watch a boring parade and some bad football on TV.
It’s too bad you don’t care about these American traditions and say that you’ve never experienced them. It makes sense, then, that your profile states you don’t have strong social conservative views and could almost be taken for a liberal. The fact is that the Norman Rockwell America did exist, and in some places it still does. It was a wonderful thing. The bits of it that are left are still wonderful and still worth preserving. I’m sorry you never experienced that and never learned to love what all that represents. I did, I tried to give it to my kids as much as possible, and I hope my grandchildren can still experience a little of that America when they arrive.
Common cultural reference points, experiences, language, and memories are what bind a people together. When we abandon those, we no longer have the concept of America in common. That’s happening now as we fragment into multiculturalism. Why help the process along?
Rockwell’s America never existed for more than a small percentage of the country. Out here in reality we have things like dysfunctional families, warm weather in the winter, and just plain too high a population in the area. Rockwell’s picture are an idealized version of small town snowbelt America, emphasis on the “idealized”.
Nobody has abandoned anything. It’s got nothing to do with multiculturalism, it’s just reality, people in different areas, with different families, and different income levels live in a different version of the world. There is no process, this is the real world, a lot of people work on holidays, a lot of people don’t like their families, a lot of people don’t like to cook, a lot of people go to the places where people are working on the holidays, a lot of people think snow is of the devil, a lot of people think Christmas music sucks. That’s what I’m pointing out to you. This situation is EXACTLY as it has ALWAYS BEEN. The only difference is you finally noticed.
Amen!lets also not forget that alot of these retail workers who would rather be home with their families are forced to work or lose their jobs.
Not to mention in most households its the woman,mom, who cooks the feast and thats an all day job!!if moms working at a job all day, no one in the family eats
Man, you must be very young! 30 years ago not a single business in my town was open on easter, thanksgiving , christmas or sundays! You couldnt get a stick of gum! Norman rockwell wasnt full of beans, but someone is. Sorry you didnt get to experience it. It was awsome!
Exactly, no one is forced to work there or shop there.
No one is forced to work at Walmart at all, or to work Thanksgiving day at Walmart or any other job for that matter. People make choices every day and that is how it should be in a free country.
I think if you lived in a larger town it would be more evident.
In my town [it’s big] all the transportation workers are working, the buses, the subway workers, the railway workers, the mechanics who help them. Everyone at the airport, the people at the counters, pilots, stewardesses, baggage handlers, food people, all the policemen, firemen, thousands and thousands of hotels are open, all the people at the counters, the maids, the bell boys, the parking attendants, the hotel restaurant people, taxi drivers, paper delivery people, the people who run 7-11 convenience stores, the hundreds of hospitals, all the nurses, the kitchen people in hospitals, doctors, the thousands of restaurants open, the cooks, the waiters, the washers, the parking lot attendants, the grocery stores [they all have elaborate turkey dinners to buy], the checkers, the baggers, the people who make those yummy dinners … and so on.
i, frankly, love it.
I’ll be working on Thanksgiving Day — helping with the delivery of around 1000 meals to homes in my area.
Now I don’t consider it work, but rather service.
I’m thinking this is a Polish or German family.
I didn’t get to experience the “no working on holidays” as a child since my dad was a fireman and worked many holidays and our holiday meals tried to accommodate his schedule. And, my mom worked night shift at a bank (when I was in high school)so our family Christmas Eve dinner of Seven Fishes also tried to accommodate her work schedule. In high school and college, I worked part time in food service so I always missed Easter Dinner.
I never shopped on Black Friday because I hate crowds and long lines. Sent my husband once when the kids were little, and afterwards he declared he’d never do it again, lol. My kids all like to shop on Black Friday, it’s a “thing” I guess, lol. They, a couple of them, plan on shopping Thanksgiving night, after dessert, rather than getting up early the next day. As long as they help with clean-up it’s no big deal.
I’ve been fortunate in my adult life to not work on the holidays I consider important and have my family present on those holidays for the most part.
The stores are open because they have customers.
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