Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has always been a major shopping day for Americans to buy Christmas gifts for their friends or family (or, more likely, gifts for themselves) due to the great sales offered. People have set their alarms for the early hours of the morning so they can wait in line to get the best deal on the newest iPhone or flat screen TV.

But now Black Friday is no longer just Friday. It has pushed its way back into my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. Now, stores are opening on Thursday, rather than early Friday morning. Kmart is even opening on Thursday morning at 6 AM! Now, people are leaving their families on a holiday about being thankful to buy more stuff that they "need." Now, people scheduled to work on Thanksgiving have little choice to do otherwise, unless they want to lose their job. Now, people struggling to make ends meet must take up a shift on Thursday night to earn enough money to put food on the table on Christmas Eve or buy one Christmas gift for their child. 

We can blame Kmart, Target, Wal-Mart, and all the other stores opening on Thanksgiving, but shouldn’t we blame ourselves? Our greedy, materialistic demands have called for this. We are willing to sacrifice a national holiday in order to get better deals on things we think we need.

If we go shopping the night of November 27 this year, next year the stores will open earlier, and the following year even earlier until Thanksgiving is no longer a holiday. People will have to work all day, and the people who aren’t working will be shopping all day for more junk that they don’t need, forgetting when the fourth Thursday of November used to be set apart for being thankful.

But if we don’t go shopping this Thanksgiving, then stores will have no reason to be open and maybe they will wait until Friday next year to open. As the consumers, we are the only ones who can make this change. So what are we going to do?

I challenge you to say no to the great deal on the iPhone 6, or whatever number they’re on these days, and at least wait until Friday to go shopping. Remember what Thanksgiving is and be thankful for something you can’t put a price on: precious time with people that you love. Please sign this petition to encourage stores like Kmart to close on Thanksgiving.