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Thanksgiving comes first: Area man takes fight to West Coast
By adamg on Wed, 11/26/2014 - 8:14am
Our own Suldog discusses the War on Thanksgiving in the pages of the Los Angeles Times.
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Yay Suldog!
I have been directing people toward that Facebook page for Thanksgiving Comes First when they post things about the War on Thanksgiving.
With the late Thanksgiving this year, and corporations pushing shopping earlier and earlier, I think more people are getting fed up with SantaPumpkin and all that.
UHub and Suldog have given us a place to send them :)
UPDATE: about five friends and family from the left coast have already linked to this article on FB this morning ... uptake! Keep up the good work!
AMEN!!!
I really cannot stand how my favorite holiday (besides my birthday) is being taken over by shopping.
AND GET OFF MY LAWN!
Great article.
Santapumpkin. Heh. I have nothing to add, Sul says it all.
We will condone capricious
We will condone capricious commercialism only if it can cauterize the carnage and consumption of our people!
Ferguson for our Turkeys
As we observe the unrest in Ferguson and the protests spreading across the nation I can't help but bear witness to the lack of concern for the Turkey genocide celebrated by you, America's illegal occupants. Some 400 years ago several true Americans shared a meal of our feathered ancestors with some squatting, starving Euro-trash. Since that fateful day over a billion of our brethren have been sacrificed to celebrate the theft of our lands and its pagan holiday of thanksgiving. So as you lift that drumstick to that pasty double chin you'd better look over your shoulder. Turkey's are back. Back in your yards, back on your roads, back in your cities, towns and sleepy bergs. Justice will be swift and the gravy lump free.
#TURKEYSLIVESMATTER
#TURKEYSLIVESMATTER
um, no.
I like the TLF posts lots, but I'm going to be the humorless jerk who points out that this is not funny. Not funny to equate human lives to poultry. Nope.
You are condoning factory
You are condoning factory farming and animal cruelty just because the animals in question are tasty?
not condoning it
But more than that, I don't condone making glib jokes about a part of our community that is in pain right now. I don't think a hashtag equating black people with turkeys is funny, or appropriate.
(Fwiw, I've actually been vegetarian for 20+ years.)
Preach, Suldog!
I will not shop on Thanksgiving, EVER. I've been forced to work on Thanksgiving many times. I'm not going to make someone else do that so I can buy some crap I could have bought some other day.
You All Are Very Kind
Thank you.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
:~}
Keep up the good fight!
Went to CVS this morning (one
Went to CVS this morning (one day BEFORE Thanksgiving) to buy a Thanksgiving card. There were about five left, scrunched on the bottom of the display that was all CHRISTMASCHRISTMASCHRISTMAS.
My love affair with CVS might be over.
Can I rekindle your love
with a four-foot long receipt featuring buy three get one free coupons for crap you don't buy?
CVS restricted by Thanksgiving Blue Laws?
When I walked by the Davis Square CVS on Tuesday morning, it had a paper sign saying that, because of Blue Laws, they are allowed to sell only certain products on Thanksgiving. I didn't take a photo and I don't remember the whole list, but it included prescription and over-the-counter medicines, food, beverages, and "batteries for emergency use only".
Has anyone else seen these signs? If you took a photo, please post it here.
I don't know how they can actually enforce these restrictions, given the prevalence of self-service checkout machines.
Do any other chain stores have such restrictions posted? I'm curious about 7-Eleven, Tedeschi's, Walgreen's, and Rite Aid.
I hope this takes off
I'd be ok with a law banning retail stores from opening on Thanksgiving and it seems like there could be the political will to push it through based on popular opinion (idiotic shoppers who fall for this excluded) at the state if not the federal level.
I've had to work plenty of holidays including Thanksgiving but that always came as an occupational hazard of working where 24/7 coverage is required. My dad also had this with his job and I remember him working second shift so we'd have dinner and then he'd leave for work. Trying to picture this same scenario where someone is heading off to some retail job so that the corporate bottom line can be fattened is infuriating.
No. No more blue laws.
1) Do you remember no Sunday alcohol or stores only open from 12-5 by law? No, we are not going back there. Should stores open on Thanksgiving? No. Should the government keep stores from opening on Thanksgiving? No.
2) Use the fact that they open as a litmus test. Then, STOP SHOPPING at the open ones. Forever. Fuck their low low prices or brand loyalty. Use market forces to make them stop.
The problem is that
as long as retailers perceive that they can make even an additional dime of profit by being open on Thanksgiving and other holidays, or on Sundays, they will do it. This is why we ocassionally need the government to intervene with actions like the blue laws - because they benefit society as a whole, instead of pandering to special interests.
Yes, I do remember what it was like when the blue laws were in place. Had to do a bit more planning, but it wasn't anything onerous. But let's cave into big business and consumerism because the "rights" of people to have the latest piece of cheaply made junk are more important than maintaining long standing traditions like Thanksgiving.
And if you can't wait one or two extra days to buy a bottle of liquor or an iPhony or whatever else, then I really pity you.
Just alcohol?
Hell, I'm old enough to remember when the stores were all closed on Sundays too. Back then the only people in the mall parking lots were parents teaching their kids to drive (or teens practicing donuts and burnouts). Would I want to go back to those days? No. However when was the last time a majority of people celebrated Memorial Day or Labor Day for their intended purposes? People can rant all they want but the gate has been opened and I think the odds of Thanksgiving being watered down to a shopping weekend are greater than large retailers being shamed into staying closed for the day.
Shame? No...
I don't think anyone (who didn't just fall off the cabbage truck) thinks that shame can motivate large retailers to do anything. Laws can and dollars can. In this day and age, when the average American is as ignorant as a lump of dung about the function of government and as responsive as a well-trained dog to whistles of "GUMMINT BAD! GUMMINT TAKING YOUR FREEDOMS! OBAMA WON'T LET YA SHOP ON THANKSGIVING! FIRST AMENDMENT!" and the like, the more effective course of action is to make Thanksgiving operations unprofitable. This means, first and foremost, that we don't shop on Thanksgiving. Then perhaps we consider not shopping at all at retailers who open on Thanksgiving. We look for alternatives. We support small businesses, we make gifts, we buy gifts that benefit local organizations, etc.
It's a worthwhile exercise, to at least think it through, to imagine that you need to find gifts outside the big box. You can find a surprising number of alternatives. What I have found is that the mental exercise makes me slow down and really think about the person I'm buying for, and what they really like. It's resulted in better gifts, and usually more affordable and/or with the money more well spent, at a business that deserves it more.
Tachometer, Thank You
I appreciate your kind words, and I understand the temptation to try for something legal to keep stores closed, but I have to agree with Kaz on this.
Now, given the choice between Thanksgiving somehow being lost as a holiday forever and a law being passed to preserve it, I'll take the law, but that's not my preference overall. My goal has always been for public opinion to be strongly voiced and for that opinion to be enough to encourage the retailers to stay closed. It will happen if, as Kaz suggests, enough people vote with their wallets and purses.
By the way, Massachusetts is already one of three states (Maine and Rhode Island are the others) with blue laws that do prohibit some Thanksgiving openings. I won't lie and tell you I'm unhappy about that, but, still, my preference would be something other than law.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I was dying at the Macy's commercial last night
"5 pm Thanksgiving doorbuster! $3 bath towels!"
I bought a $3 bath towel at Target...in July. Definitely not unique enough to be worth missing Thanksgiving dinner and getting into a fistfight.
But that was a
Target $3 towel. I'm sure the ones at Macys are of far better quality.
Plus, when's the last time you heard of a fistfight breaking out at Macys, even on Black Friday.
A friend used to work at Macy's
This sort of thing was one of the reasons that she now works for Nordstrom.
Yes, there were crowd control issues and fighting over items. Yes, employees were expected to referee. (she isn't in the Boston area though)
She will be enjoying Thanksgiving with her family this year, rather than going in at noon and preparing for a 4pm opening at Macy's. Sure, she'll still have to work on Friday starting at 6am ... but not Thursday until 2am and then Friday from noon on like she did before.
Realize that a store opening at a certain hour on Thursday will generally call in employees a couple hours before that - in other words, people are stuck. If you don't have family around, childcare can be tricky, too.
"The government should intervene"
Disgusting. Markets work, apparently a lot better than condoms do. We bred our way to 7 billion, and a lot of them need to work. If running a register on Thanksgiving pays, somebody's gotta do it.
...really?
How long have human beings been building up to that 7 billion, and how long have condoms been around? So much for your "logic".