Missing Traditions

The ugly truth about Black Friday

My first emphatic notice that we were starting the Christmas part of the holiday season even earlier than last year was the large display of trees and decorating items at my favorite home improvement store – two days before Halloween.

By Nov. 11 Santa’s “ho-ho-ho” was part of a local car dealership commercial.Then there was news of two women camped out at a big box electronics store for two weeks to get a deal on a 50-inch television.

I’m just old enough to miss some of the traditions of the past, and in particular those traditions that let us enjoy and appreciate one holiday at a time during this special season.This year, however, as Black Friday takes a back seat to the commercial trampling of Thanksgiving as retailers plan sales, sales, sales for the day. So it sure looks as if at least one treasured American holiday is about to fade away.

And that would be a shame given Thanksgiving’s history. Celebrations of Thanksgiving date back to the first European settlements in America. George Washington proclaimed the last Thursday, Nov. 26 as a national day of thanks and prayer. But it wasn’t until the 1860s when Abraham Lincoln’s declaration that the last Thursday in November be set as a national holiday of thanksgiving that the day truly became an American hallmark.

There was a glitch in 1939 when Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date from the fourth Thursday in November to the third. The change was in response to retailers’ concerns that since Thanksgiving fell on Nov. 30 that year, it would shorten the shopping calendar between Thanksgiving and Christmas by almost a week and lower Christmas sales receipts. Roosevelt was convinced to re-schedule Thanksgiving to Nov. 23.

The change screwed up school and football calendars, and about half the states went along with the change, the other half keeping the Lincoln-set date. In 1941, Congress legislatively returned the date for Thanksgiving in America to the fourth Thursday in November.

Even back then, the traditional holiday shopping season was concentrated between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And Black Friday was a factor as crowds of shoppers – many who skipped work the day after Thanksgiving – descended on the retail world to get a jump on the shopping season. They clogged streets and stores and were generally considered something of a crowd control problem.

Later, the negative connotation of Black Friday took a turn to the positive when creative retailers suggested that moving into “black ink” accounting territory was a result of this first big day of holiday shopping, said Nancy Koehn, historian at Havard Business School.

But back to the original idea for Roosevelt to change the date, which was capitalism and the profits of our retailers (who are acknowledged as employing a large number of our friends, neighbors and family members).

Although people had an extra week to shop under the Roosevelt schedule, it was found that consumer spending was about the same as when Thanksgiving was the last Thursday in November.

The extra week really didn’t make a difference in profits.And it isn’t likely that one day will either.

Marty Carlson, a freelance writer, has been covering local news for the past 17 years. She can be reached via email at martycarlson1218@gmail.com.