Opinion

Is Thanksgiving still a holiday?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/black-friday/0/black-friday-2016-best-deals/

Since the year 1863, Thanksgiving was a holiday feast enjoyed by many families across the United States. During the holiday, families would gather around and enjoy a large feast that celebrated good fortune. It was the first real family celebration of the year before Christmas.

 

The following day, which is referred to as black Friday became known as the start of the Christmas shopping season around the year 1932. This day was when major retailers would have sales on items that were incredibly expensive to appease the pockets of their consumers.

Surprisingly, Black Friday did not become a phenomenon overnight. It wasn’t until major changes in technology came about that Black Friday became one of the busiest shopping days of the year. With the invention of televisions, computers, cell phones, and other electronic items, the demand for these products would become higher during the Christmas season. Since these items were normally incredibly expensive during the regular season, retailers would sell them at lower prices during the beginning of December in order to make larger profits. The idea became so successful that from the years 1993-2001, Black Friday quickly became the 5th busiest shopping day of the year. Slowly, the public began to make traditions of waking up extremely early or camping out overnight outside of the store to get the best deals before anyone else had the chance. This has led to higher rates of crime and property damage of overzealous shoppers over time.

Retailers began to change their strategies, and introduced the idea of opening their stores as early as 6pm on Thanksgiving day to avoid any issue. This has caused many people to completely forget about the tradition of Thanksgiving, and view it as another step before Christmas. Even now,  there are already pictures of Santa Claus and Christmas trees being decorated almost a month before the holiday. As we approach Thanksgiving, one must ask himself a very tricky question. Is Thanksgiving still even considered to be a holiday at this point?