Shopping on Thanksgiving...

Even though the stores will be open, I won't be out shopping on Thanksgiving. I will share the holiday with my family and am quite content to stay home. And there are a lot of issues with shopping on a holiday - people forced to work when they would rather be home, people ignoring their families to hit the stores early, a diminution of the meaning of the holiday, and probably a bunch more that I'm missing because I'm not impacted by any of it.

BUT - this country is made up of 300+ million people. Some of them have no family with whom they can share the holiday - the opportunity to get out shopping and be with others, or even to just be surrounded by strangers, may be making the best of a bad day. For some workers, working a holiday means bonus pay they could desperately use - and there are more people working than you'd guess - hotels must be open, there must be some police and fire fighters on duty, roads may have to be plowed, football players must play, people are sick in the hospital (babies will be born and people will die), and oh so many others will have to work. Asking salespeople to work ( at time-and-a-half) isn't such an awful thing as long as they can arrange to celebrate during part of the day, or on another day.

Those who bluster about the injustice of stores opening early have their own issues. We all have our own issues. I'm just saying. Your mileage may vary.