By Kerry Steinhofer, Campus Correspondent
From the ads to the enormous crowds to the blowout sales, Black Friday is it’s own special form of the Hunger Games. May the odds be ever in your favor in getting what you were looking for.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of the year to get together with friends and family and give thanks for everything you have. Now it seems like more people are concerned about the big sales that come out on Black Friday than spending time with those around them.
As Thanksgiving becomes “Thanksgetting,” people give thanks for what they have until late afternoon when they are searching the ads and making lists of what they want to buy. They stop what they are doing, leave their houses in a hurry and leave everyone behind to satisfy their needs. Rather than spend time with those around them, people sit in traffic, wrestle the store mobs and stand in long lines. People are more concerned about the material items that they don’t need; instead they need the love and relationships with friends and family.
Black Friday takes away from Thanksgiving. More and more stores are opening earlier on Thanksgiving Day. Some are opening as early as 4 p.m. that evening. People try to blame and even boycott the stores for opening so early, but that’s not necessarily the case. Yes, the stores are the ones that open that early, but we are the ones that demand it. We are to blame, as well. We allow this kind of consumerism and our materialism to draw our attention away from what the real meaning of Thanksgiving is.
The fact is, I enjoy Black Friday, with its excitement of staying up all night and going around to different stores. However, I don’t go as early as possible on Thanksgiving and I don’t try to be the first person in line. I also hardly ever buy anything. I have also found that while Black Friday sales are great deals, the better ones are before and even after Black Friday.
To me, Black Friday takes away the tradition of Thanksgiving. There are families that have traditions for going out at 2 a.m. to hit the sales, but there are greater traditions out there that should be kept instead of throwing them away for the sake of a good deal.
Around the time many people will be choosing between a crowded Target and an even more crowded Walmart, I’ll be deciding between my mom’s homemade pumpkin pie and a cherry pie.