Tis the season of bamboozling!November has just begun and already my job has dedicated every other song to the holidays.
Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened (I don’t think people are really planning for it yet, either) and corporate minds are already trying to get you to shop for Christmas.
Thanksgiving used to be a couple of days for family and eating and stores would open around 3am for Black Friday. Now, people are eating DINNER at 2 or 3 pm to make sure they’re first in line at Wal-Mart when it opens at 5 pm.
Black Friday spending has steadily increased over the years and will probably continue to increase. Surprisingly, I read that Black Friday deals really aren’t that big of deals anyway (of course there are those mega deals), but advertising and marketing lead people to believe that in order to have the exclusives, you need to skip out on family time and wait in line.
Cyber Monday is really where it’s at. Even if you do decide to shop in stores, haggling is your best friend. You really don’t need to pay that much attention to notice that all the stores have basically the same sales. A lot of “Buy 2, get 2 free” type of things or “46% off!!” If you walk into a store and let them know that you can get this same product for cheaper next door, chances are they’ll lower their price for you and sometimes you’ll end up saving more.
All in all, it’s important to realize that advertisement are marketing are driving people away from what really matters, family, to material things. I don’t think Thanksgiving is going to be like it used to be anymore but I think we can all take time to appreciate the non-material things we have.
Izchel Padilla
IMC Hawks Blog 
This post really resonated with me. I completely agree that Thanksgiving has started to lose its special meaning where family comes together to enjoy each others company and to be grateful for what you have. I’ve always found it so ironic that the big retailers push people to go buy what they don’t have the day after they are supposed to be giving thanks for what they do have. At the very least, they could advertise the current holiday before skipping over to the next. If you are going to push sales for Halloween and Christmas, you might as well do it right and squeeze some in for Thanksgiving too.
I could not agree more with this article as well as comment listed above. In my opinion it is quite sad that such an intimate and meaningful holiday such as Thanksgiving is now spent away from family and friends and instead in a line of strangers waiting just to get a video game half off. Without going into too much depth about how we are suppose to stay humble and be thankful for what matters most such as all the non materialistic items in our life, we are cutting that short to appreciate the opposite, i try to believe and have faith that over the next few years black friday will develop back into black FRIDAY not thursday shopping. Stores believe that opening earlier then later will attract more people however if they continue pushing the time forward, i HOPE that people will get tired of missing out on their holiday and will not be there as the doors open, rather wait and enjoy what really matters