Retailers wake up!

Most national retailers are now starting Black Friday on Thursday afternoon, which is, to put it bluntly, stupid. This is Thanksgiving after all and it is to supposed to signify appreciating what you have, not craving what you don’t.

Ideally, Thanksgiving should be spent with loved ones, a turkey, mounds of mashed potatoes, and savory gravy; no Black Friday deal is more important than that. It is also unfair of the retailer to ask a worker to go into work on this holiday and miss this important time with relatives, who they may rarely see and who may have traveled thousands of miles to visit.

What’s the difference between opening at 8 p.m. on Thursday and 8 a.m. on Friday? People will still go shopping on Black Friday, but will be able to spend time with their family. If the deals are good, people will still spend tens of billions of dollars over this weekend. The businesses will still make plenty of money, or go in the black, and quite possibly even more people will even come out to shop. The main reason that people choose to shop at a store is the quality of the deal, not the time employees have to leave their Thanksgiving dinners.

It is understandable that some people may, by choice, leave their Thanksgiving dinner to get a 100 dollar TV from Target. It is also understandable that businesses must try and give themselves an advantage over their competitors.

However, it is unfair for the company to make its employees work during this time and this trend has to stop now.

It is common knowledge that almost all stores, especially retailers, are closed on Christmas. There is no logical reason that this policy, or common courtesy, to the employee should not be in effect on Thanksgiving too, because it is a holiday with the same amount of influence in American culture. Luckily, there is a simple solution to this growing problem. Create a “blue law” banning retail stores from being open on Thanksgiving. It’s that simple. Originally intended for religious purposes hundreds of years ago, “blue laws” restrict shopping or ban the sale of items on specific days. For example, Illinois currently has a “blue law” preventing car dealerships from being open on Sunday. The state of Illinois must look into creating a “blue law” to prevent retailers from opening on Thanksgiving and ideally until a reasonable time on Friday morning. This law would keep the Thanksgiving tradition alive while setting a precedent that would lead the nation in the right direction.