Fighting back in the War on Thanksgiving

[jmyrlefuller]

Fighting back in the war on Thanksgiving
Big-box retailers are waging an all-out assault on one of our most revered secular holidays. What can we do to counter them?

by J. Myrle Fuller
November 16, 2014

It is rare to see an issue that seems to unite both labor unions and traditionalist conservatives as much as the recent move by retailers to push the chaos of Black Friday, previously that day after Thanksgiving bonanza where shoppers scramble for cheap Christmas gifts, into the Thanksgiving holiday itself.

[float=right]
Macy's policy: Watch our parade, but then, the holiday's
over. Back to work![/float]Indeed, what started out last year as a desperate attempt to make up for a shorter holiday season has now taken permanent root as big-box retailers such as Macy's (of all retailers, the one that depends on having people home on Thanksgiving morning so they can watch their big parade in New York City on TV), Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Kmart are not only opening on Thanksgiving even earlier than on previous years, but according to at least one estimate are actually giving their biggest deals on Thanksgiving itself in a deliberate effort to coerce shoppers into intruding on their holiday time and come into the store.

If you have any doubt about the retailers' intentions, consider the case of the Walden Galleria. This mall, based in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York, is levying a fine of up to $250 an hour if its retailers dare stay closed on the Thanksgiving holiday. The retailers are, without doubt, waging war on Thanksgiving.

Now, the obvious solution that gets bandied about when corporations run amok is to boycott—not to shop on Thanksgiving, or perhaps at any store that dares throw a sale on Thanksgiving at all for the rest of the holiday season. Yet that's not certain to work. The retailers already know that they are reaching a niche market by opening on a holiday. A recent survey (I'd love to cite the source here but I can't remember where I found it for the life of me) asked a sample of Americans whether they approved of the idea of blockbuster sales on Thanksgiving. 49 percent opposed. Only 16 percent were in favor (the rest really didn't care either way), and of that 16 percent, only 7 percent actually planned to shop on the holiday. If this were an election, opening on Thanksgiving would lose in a landslide that George McGovern would pity. Yet that 7 percent is what the retail industry is going to drag their employees away from the dinner table, or their beds if they run their holiday sale overnight, to court.

A brief aside before I continue: yes, the retail workers do bear a lot of the brunt. To those who want to make false comparisons to military, nurses, and other professions that protect life and limb and thus, practically, cannot afford to have everybody off at once, retail does not fit in that category. We survived without major retail sales before 2013 and nobody's going to die because they can't get their discounted flatscreen TV. Furthermore, if you want to make the argument that because of that, it's no big deal to not be able to have as many people as possible off work on the same day, may I note that such a rationale was the same reason Joseph Stalin tried to eliminate weekends from the calendar during the early days of the Soviet Union. It was an effort to break down institutions and keep as much industrial activity going as constantly as possible. Eventually, it failed. For those, such as the retailers, who insist that there is supposedly a huge mass of people who want to work a huge sale on Thanksgiving, you're not fooling anyone; there may be a few people enticed by a few extra dollars in their paycheck, but not nearly enough to manage the kind of sales the big-boxers are trying to pull off. Finally, for those who suggest getting another job, have you seen this economy? Retail is one of the few industries that still has robust hiring and is accessible to most people. It is a major part of the labor market, and forcing retail workers to work Thanksgiving is indeed quite disruptive to the holiday, contrary to what naysayers say.

What, then, can be done to stop this? Should we even try? Conservatives such as myself tend to be wary of government interventions into business operations, especially ones that restrict the ability of businesses to be successful. Yet holidays are declared by the government. It was Roosevelt who declared Thanksgiving on its current date, and Lincoln who codified the holiday in the 19th century. Could there be a law to stop this? Well, I suppose so. A few states in the northeast have blue laws, which prevent all but a few certain kinds of businesses from opening on Thanksgiving. These date to much earlier times when Puritans still had sway in state politics. Yet it's arguably impractical: even in these states, the big-boxers open up in the middle of the night on Friday, as soon as legally possible, disrupting its workers' sleep patterns and still potentially ruining Thanksgiving. Plus, the downside is that it makes a significant burden on businesses that would have a legitimate reason for staying open on Thanksgiving to actually be able to open.

I was reminded of a law that New Jersey had in regard to price gouging on gasoline. It is a crime in New Jersey to change the price of gasoline more than once in any 24-hour frame. Perhaps a similar measure could be used to neuter retailers' ability to coerce shoppers into its stores on a holiday. By requiring that any store open on Thanksgiving, for example, to also offer that same deal to shoppers for at least a twelve-hour period the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and preventing retailers from lowering their prices to anything below those deals, it would neuter the big-boxers' incentive to offer blockbuster deals on that day, but at the same time not disrupt businesses who only incidentally remain open on Thanksgiving. The Attorneys General of each state already have the power to enforce such laws, should they be written.

Might I add that the big-boxers might find some advice from Truett Cathy, who famously kept his chain of Chick-fil-a sandwich restaurants closed on Sundays and had major success. Closing for one day will not be the death of your business. It might even earn that much more respect from your employees and customers.

In the meantime, lest you make yourself out to be a hypocrite, don't do your holiday shopping on Thanksgiving, trying to fulfill material needs. (If you do, do it online instead.) Spend some time with friends and family, have a nice meal (personally, I like to load up on the veggies), maybe watch a little football, and be thankful for what you do have. After all, that's the whole point.

©2014 J. Myrle Fuller / Fullervision Enterprises. Licensed to The Briefing Room.[/font]

[Oceander]

Business exists to cater to the desires of its customers.  If the customers do not want it, business will not offer it because businesses are in it to make a profit, not do charity.  The fact that so many businesses operate the way they do viz. Thanksgiving is merely an indication that this is what a majority of their customers want.  So if one does not like the way businesses operate, then one must address one's self to the American consumer, not attempt to use the threat of government-sanctioned violence to force everyone else to do what one wishes they would do (that is, after all, what liberals do, and only idiots and jackals want to be liberals).

[mountaineer]

Agreed, O. Let the market decide, if we really believe in the free market at all.

[truth_seeker]

Agreed, O. Let the market decide, if we really believe in the free market at all.

Make that 3 votes for the free market.

[Cyber Liberty]

Make that 3 votes for the free market.

4

[Bigun]

4

Now 5.

[DCPatriot]

I'm pissed this year....

One of my sons has invited me for Thanksgiving Dinner for the past 3 years.  Very graciously accept...the food is spectacular.

After accepting a text message invite for this year, I find out that it's not going to be on Thanksgiving Day.  Rather, it's this coming Sunday instead.

Of course, I'm still going...the food man...the food!

But WTF???

Now I'm thinking maybe they want to go shopping on Thursday.