Black Friday or Greedy Thursday?

Many department stores are opening earlier each year in the U.S.A. for Black Friday.  It is called Black Friday because the sales on this day often put retailers in the black for the year.  Then the time kept creeping back until they were finally opening at midnight.  Ok, so you stay up late to get there early instead of setting the alarm to stand in line outside the doors waiting for them to open.

Back when I was doing much more Christmas shopping than I do now, stores would open at 6 or 8 AM instead of the usual 10 AM on Black Friday with early bird specials.  The stores often only had 20-50 or the special items that brought people to the store.  So if you were not the first to that department or special display, you missed out – thus the news stories every year of injuries form trampled store patrons,   Retailers thought if you came in for the special and did not get it, you would buy something else there instead.  We never did this, if they did not have what we came for, we just left and went to the next sale store on our list.  In other words, that old retailer’s trick did not work on us – hopefully others shop smartly that way too…

Some may think Thanksgiving Thursday is a greedy day for Americans because we use the holiday as a reason to eat like gluttons.  However we also use it as a time to get together with family and share what we are thankful for so that offsets the overeating.  Now some stores are getting dollar hungry by opening at 6 or 8 PM on Thursday evening as an extension of their Black Friday sale.  Does anyone else see opening on Thursday as being greedy on the part of the retailers?  Greedy because they hope it will be even more money while interrupting the thanksgiving holiday of their customers and employees.  That is just my opinion though.  Let me know what you think in comments!

If you are a savvy shopper, be wary of the pre-sale ads – many of the big ticket items still do not go on sale until Friday.  So you might waste your holiday hours going early to the store to beat the crowds if you do not read the advertisements carefully.  If you find a store that is doing this trick, let other readers know with a comment here so they know better who is not worth giving up their family and food time for.