NEW YORK (AP) — Last Thanksgiving Day, Kimberly Mudge Via’s mother, sister and nieces left in the middle of their meals to head for the mall.
Now, Via says she’ll never host Thanksgiving dinner for her relatives again.
“They barely finished,” says the 28-year-old who lives in Boone, N.C. “They thanked me and left their plates on the counter.”
That scene could become more common in homes across the country. Black Friday shopping, the annual rite of passage on the day after Thanksgiving, continues to creep further into the holiday as more stores open their doors a day early.
It’s a break with tradition. Black Friday, which typically is the year’s biggest shopping day, for a decade has been considered the official start to the busy holiday buying season. Stores open in the wee hours of the morning with special deals called doorbusters and stay open late into the evening. Meanwhile, Thanksgiving and Christmas remained the only two days a year that stores were closed.
Now Thanksgiving is slowly becoming just another shopping day. Over the past few years, major retailers, including Target and Toys R Us, slowly have pushed opening times into Thanksgiving night to one-up each other and compete for holiday dollars. Some initially resisted, saying that they wanted their employees to be able to spend time with their families.
This year, Macy’s, Wal-Mart and Kohl’s are among at least a dozen major retailers that are opening on Thanksgiving. Several are opening for the first time, and others, including Gap, are opening earlier on the holiday than they did last year.
Read more https://bigstory.ap.org/article/all-day-shopping-frenzy-thanksgiving
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