Op-Ed: The Dark Impact of Black Friday

By Jack Fenner

It's no question that Black Friday is a day filled with mass hysteria, huge crowds, insane traffic and people rushing in and out of store doors at record speeds. More and more each year, Black Friday pushes up it’s starting times to overlap with Thanksgiving and starts to strip away the meaning of the holiday.

Thanksgiving is all about being thankful for what you have and on Black Friday it is about getting the most things as fast as possible. A “holiday” based almost completely on materialism has no place to start on Thanksgiving. 

As these start times are pushed up into Thanksgiving, it is forcing desperate shoppers to leave their Thanksgiving celebrations to make sure they have a spot in line before stores open. I’m also sure that some are even pitching their tent earlier, and skipping Thanksgiving altogether. 

Photo taken by Cris Faga

These deals that people wait for are not even that crazy, unless they are going for a big ticket item, and the people that do go for these items are often met with disappointment as they are typically in very small quantities. Even though most accept this, they still will go out when the sky is pitch black to claim their spot in lines just hours after being thankful for what they already had.

Photo from Campmor

It’s hard to deny that this consumerist holiday is having a negative impact on the moral focus of Thanksgiving. When you are celebrating Thanksgiving, the only thing that should be on your mind is your appreciation of the people and things you have, because there is always someone less fortunate than you. It seems, though, that as Black Friday takes over the day, this sacred message is beginning to lose its meaning. 

So for the sake of Thanksgiving I encourage everyone to put down the phones, forget the deals and remember why giving thanks is so important.