ALT-1 Stores Open on Thanksgiving Day Critiqued
Thanksgiving is a specail time of year that everyone gathers to give thanks for the previous year. It is a time of reflection and appreciation for the past experiences. Not only that, Thanksgiving is a time to grow personally and look at how life has changed for you during the past several years.
One would naturally assume that all of the stores would be closed on Thanksgiving. Afterall, this is a holiday that is set aside for families to gather and give thanks for one another. Yet, Thanksgiving is one of the largetst shopping days of the year for the United States. Stores are opened on Thanksgiving day, often early.
Grocery stores are often opened on Thanksgiving day. Now this is a relief to many of us that have unexpectantly run out of ingredients, snacks and such. Some would argue that grocery stores should not be open on Thanksgiving day because employees should be home with their families. Now ideally this would be best in a perfect world. However, can you imagine how much money stores would lose by being closed on Thanksgiving day? Also just think of all the people that would run out of items on Thanksgiving day!
Department stores hold huge Thanksgiving day sales. After all, Thanksgiving is the first official day to do gift shopping for the Decemember holidays. These sales are a tremendous saving for consumers. In fact, without these sales there are some that would argue that many people would be strictly limited on how much they could buy present wise for the December holidays.
Is this good or is this bad? That is totally up to the individual. But let's look at department stores being open on Thanksgiving in another light. Being that it is a national Holiday in the United States, employees typicall get holiday working pay while they are clocked in and helping the rest of us. This additional pay benefits the employees and their families. So even though it may seem unfair to have employees working on Thanksgiving day, it is in the long run benefiting many families and individuals.
Retail and other businesses notice a significant increase in sales on Thanksgiving day. Without this day of shopping there might literally be thousands of businesses that will go under and not be operational. That in turn means people without jobs and means of support.
Although many will oppose Thanksgiving being a day for shopping and think that Corporate America is draining the life out of the family unit, there are many benefits of spending and shopping on Thanksgiving day that benefit the family.
