Retailers Want Thanksgiving to Be a Shopping Day

Since Thanksgiving is later this year, there are fewer shopping days between scarfing down stuffing and all of the December holidays, so retailers are figuring out whatever tricks they can pull to get people to open their wallets. Some have already launched major deals — I noticed a promotion by Levi’s on Twitter a few days ago, for example, that gave shoppers 40 percent off their online purchases.

Another thing stores are doing is opening up on Thanksgiving day — some opening as early as 8:00 a.m. meaning lots of retail workers will spend their Thanksgivings at work. When retailers have done this before, they’ve faced lots of criticism about how they’ve latched onto a family holiday and turned it into a frenzied, materialistic mess, so to counteract some of this, some retailers are offering overtime pay or an additional paycheck based on the amount of hours they’ve worked in previous weeks.

I’ve never been much of a Black Friday shopper — I’ve poked around the deals online, but Christmas for my family and circle of friends have been more about getting together than giving and receiving gifts. So I am anti-Black Friday, which means you won’t see me posting about deals here (and there are entire sites out there dedicated to that anyway). The first time my family ever tried to do Black Friday, we drove to the mall to see if we could get some deals, took one look at the nightmarish scene, and drove back home.

Photo: John Henderson

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.