It’s that time of the year again, Thanksgiving is upon us, a day dedicated to everything and anything we’ve ever been grateful for. That is until, of course, items start going on sale in stores everywhere. Families are brought together for a wholesome, hearty dinner, and then they go out in the middle of night to beat others to that Blu Ray Set of Eddie Murphy movies such as Pluto Nash or The Nutty Professor.

It’s a grim time for Americans, there are tales of human beings spending several nights outside of the mall or a Best Buy as they wait for Black Friday to commence. It’s as if retail beckons, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

Now, when taking that line and applying it in the context of the masses of people swarmed outside, say,  a Walmart, it’s hard to not draw parallels. These weary people have waited hours, days, weeks, to race and compete against others for those consumables such as cookies at a 2 for 1 deal. A famous comedian known as Bill Burr brings up the valid point in an interview with Conan O’Brien, in which he states that “there is nothing in Walmart worth getting trampled over.” There is something about going to a Walmart right after Thanksgiving that essentially nullifies the overall purpose of Thanksgiving altogether.

However, Black Friday does not have the same reverence as it had in the past. Since the online market has expanded at such a drastic rate, even driving stores such as Toys R Us out of business, there isn’t such a mass of people at the sales, well, relative to past years. With that being said, that doesn’t counter the argument that Black Friday kills Thanksgiving as now these people who were sweating and breathing down the necks of their fellow Americans at Walmart are now doing the same thing at their computer as Grandma is trying to feed them cookies.

“I j-j-just thought that you’d want to spend time with your family.”

“Not now grandma, I’m waiting for these sick deals to drop on this Kashmeer Sweater.”

Black Friday is a great time to take care of that Christmas shopping list. After all, we know that Santa Claus is on a budget, he, or she (depending on which Claus you prefer), has bills to pay, elves to feed, and a guerilla market campaign with Coca-Cola to maintain. Perhaps it’d be ideal to maybe move Black Friday to another day, maybe Black Wednesday, so after people fail to get the items that they wanted, they can learn to be grateful for it the next day.

Overall, Thanksgiving is a time in which families get together, have fun, perhaps have unnecessary political conversations that ruin the mood, and watch football. Perhaps the stockpiling of food is for us Americans to build up enough energy to reap the harvest of the sales to take place the following day. And to be honest, is there anything more American than that?