DENVER — The expansion of Thanksgiving weekend shopping to the holiday itself has raised concerns among both workers and clergy who worry that the change puts family time at risk.
Father Sinclair Oubre, spiritual moderator of the Texas-based Catholic Labor Network, said the store openings are a “disturbing trend” that is “an assault on the family.”
“We have almost completed the evolutionary process of having two classes of workers: those who get holidays off and can stay with their families and those who are forced to work so that those who have holidays off won’t have to stay with their families,” Father Oubre said.
Retailers such as Sears, Walmart, Target, Kmart, Toys “R” Us and Gap are increasingly opening their stores on Thanksgiving Day. The following day, known as Black Friday, is one of the most profitable shopping days of the year.
Business analysts cite increased competition from Internet shopping and some customers’ desires to shop on Thanksgiving as motives to open stores on what is traditionally a day off, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In 2011, retailers who opened on Thanksgiving Day earned 22% more over the Thanksgiving Day weekend.
Two popular Internet petitions on the Change.org website are protesting the changes.
Casey St. Clair, a Target employee of six years from Corona, Calif., organized one petition to “save Thanksgiving” that now has over 370,000 signatures.
She said Thanksgiving Day off “really does give me that one day to relax and visit family I otherwise have no time to see.”
Introducing more business hours on the evening of Thanksgiving Day means that employees need to arrive hours before the store opens, she explained.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York criticized the new phenomenon of Thanksgiving Day shopping in a Nov. 20 essay in the New York Post.
“The stores, we hear, will open on Thanksgiving. Isn’t that a sign of progress and liberation?” he asked. “Sorry, but no — it’s a sign of a further descent into a highly privatized, impersonal, keep-people-at-a-distance culture, one that values having stuff and doing things over just being with people whom we love, cherish and appreciate.”
The cardinal said he will pray this Thanksgiving that God preserves “a culture where personal friendship, genuine conversation and family unity can be a high priority.”
“I’ll beg God to keep those values constant in our society,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Why? Because I’m fearful they’re disappearing.”
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Sadly, it’s not just shopping on Thanksgiving. My next door neighbor had yard work done this morning. She just had the leaves blown and bagged two days ago! I guess it was a leaf emergency and could not wait until tomorrow. :-(
Satan will use the love of money, power, prestige, and all the other entrapments of this world to break up the family. And, he does it a little at a time so it is not so noticeable. Get thee behind us Satan, in the Name of Jesus Christ, the Nazorean!
I loved Thanksgiving because, unlike Christmas, no one had found a way to really commercialize it. Now they have.
After the encroachment of retail openings into Thanksgiving Day itself this year, I decided for the first time ever to not shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving either. They can have all the sales they want . . . I’m not paying any attention!
Family life in this country has become non-existent. This is just another blow to destroy it. The shopping craze is a ruse to direct our attention to the evils of Satan and make Christmas an orgy of greed. It does not have to be this way. People could put an end to this by not participating. People could bring us back to holiness by taking a stand for Christianity instead of letting the government and the evildoers win this fight. We have allowed all of this (and it will get worse) to happen by our apathy. We complain and do nothing but go along with the crowd in the end. I am 74 and Praise God, I remember the blessings of the past and it is so painful to live these days that I am looking forward to nothing but going home to the Lord.
I remember how the Thanksgiving Day Drive used to be. Not too much traffic, just drive to and from relatives houses> resturants closed except for White Castle.
Yesterday was more active. People leaving family gatherings to go shopping and lines of people at stores on the way home from our Thanksgiving Day gathering.
What is more important people or things? Actually, it is nice to give presents, but time together is very important.
The assault on the family started long before Black Friday and stores being open on Thanksgiving. When I was a kid, stores were closed on SUNDAY (gasp!). Somehow we all managed to get whatever shopping we needed to do the rest of the week. We spent the day at my grandmothers, hanging out with my cousins. We can only blame ourselves. If we didn’t patronize the stores on these days, they wouldn’t open.
Satan creeps in a tiny step at a time. Lord Jesus protect us all, open our hearts, and enlighten our minds dear Savior.
Walmart was THE first retailer to initiate this, yet they sell religious items ... go figure!
Unfortunately, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn who wrote the book, The Harbinger is totally on track. The main theme of the book is how the USA has put God totally out of the picture and doesn’t even know or realize they are doing so. The problem being, we are suffering the consequences just like ancient Israel did when they turned away from God and into pagan worship, which is basically what materialism and the rest of the American lifestyle today is.
@Seymour Thanksgiving is not a holy day of obligation. I am a devout Catholic and I went to Mass Thanksgiving morning, raked some leaves in early afternoon a had a family get togther in the evening. I seen nothing wrong in my leaf raking. Although, I am against forcing retail peope to work on Thanksgiving evening.
@Seymour I thought the same thing. Everyone was working and running and forgetting their families on the one day we’ve established to do nothing further than be with family, and thank our Lord. It’s a terrible sign of another spirit living within us when we can’t be focused and present in the goodness of proper praise and thanksgiving for our God and the wonderful gift he gave us in this country. Nothing is holy anymore.
Getting down to the basics of the Catholic Church, isn’t it a sin to be so greedy when one has to be the first to go beating down the doors to shop for Christmas on Thanksgiving Day, the one day of the year that families honor God in their togetherness and give thanks? . Give me a break.
This latest abomination of forcing people to work on THanksgiving day is another clear sign to me that our sick society
Is devolving so rapidly that it is hard to keep up with it. The people of faith must be countercultural more than ever.
We must not follow the crowd. WE must pray and sacrifice more than ever. Perhaps GOd’‘s mercy will mitigate what
Is surely coming soon.
My cousin’s husband has been called away for an emergency on Thanksgiving (or was it Christmas). Something about a busted pipe. Many people like fire fighters, police officers, medical staff, Indian Chiefs has to work on holidays and Sundays. Last I checked, retail was not considered a service profession. In job searching, when I apply for retail I am very careful to specify the hours and days I am not available.
Cardinal Dolan and other Catholic clergyman are the very reason that we find ourselves at this low point in American Culture. It is ironic that they choose to comment now about the profanation of this SECULAR holiday. The apparition of Our Lady of LaSallete gave a stern warning to the world about the eclipse of the faith, the reason why,(profaning the Sabbath)and what this would mean for the world. Priests are to teach the faith. They no longer do because they no longer know it themselves. The sabbath rest is a law of love; detachment and renewal, with the life giving eucharist at center. JPII wrote a letter to all of them, and to all of us, as well: The Day of Our Lord. Not ONE of the American Bishops gave it any mention at the time. By ignoring this warning, bishops, you have led a multitude of souls to PERDITION. This is the reason that Our Lady wept so at LaSallete. Cardinal Dolan should go and read the messages of Our Lady of LaSallete, 1846 France, parts of which were heavily suppressed as they dealt with clergy and religious.
TJ:
You are right, Thanksgiving Day is not a holy day of obligation and there is no requirement that a Catholic not do physical work on that day. However, I think Seymour means his neighbor paid people to work on the yard on Thanksgiving Day because he said: “had yard work done this morning.” That’s like the retail stores paying people to work on Thanksgiving.
It’s disappointing to see Thanksgiving being violated by commercialism. It does one’s soul more good to take the day to give thanks to God and spend time with family than to be the buying machine corporations want to brainwash people into being.
Does anyone else remember Sundays in the old days? The rhythm of one day out of seven with commercial life at a near stand-still? The emphasis on family? I don’t argue any of this anymore. With money and greed and ‘standards of living’ our new ‘de facto gods’, stores being open on Thanksgiving makes perfect sense. I hope they all kill each other over cheap iphones or ipads or I-whatevers.
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