In 2011 Americans were shocked as big retailers opened their stores at midnight on Thanksgiving. Now the same stores open in the middle of the cherished national holiday.
Target's Black Friday hours since 2010.
Michelle Rial/BuzzFeed News
It only took five years Thanksgiving to stop being a day off for retail workers.
As opening at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Thursday becomes the standard for America's biggest retail chains, it's worth noting how recently and swiftly Black Friday took over this cherished national holiday. Americans were protesting midnight openings on Thanksgiving as recently as 2011 — just four years later, J.C. Penney is opening at 3 p.m. on Thursday, while RadioShack holds its "Black Friday sale" on Wednesday and opens again on Thursday morning. Kmart will open at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving and remain open for 42 hours straight — and no, 42 hours is not a typo.
"The retailer strategy for as long as there's been retail is you want to be the first thing in the car," Marcie Merriman, a retail strategy and consumer engagement consultant at Ernst & Young, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "If you wait until later, there's the risk that you're going to miss the boat… I think that's what drove them from going from Fridays to Thursdays."
While REI got plenty of praise for announcing its stores will stay closed on Black Friday and Thanksgiving, and chains like GameStop and TJX choose to give employees the holiday off, that's not the reality for hundreds of thousands of retail workers.
Some Americans are still protesting Thanksgiving openings on Facebook.
The Middle Class Action Project / Via Facebook: events
For many years, big retailers like Best Buy, Target, and Walmart started Black Friday sales in the early hours of Friday itself, between 4 a.m. and 7 a.m. As the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, Black Friday events typically drew large crowds of customers, waiting for doors to open so they could snag sweet deals on electronics and cashmere sweaters. Some crowds got so aggressive that in 2008, a 34-year-old Walmart employee, a temp for the holiday season, was trampled to death in a stampede after the doors of his New York store broke open.
But most of the nation's big chains didn't touch Thanksgiving itself before 2011.
That year, retailers like Target, Macy's, Best Buy and Kohl's decided to start their Black Friday deals at midnight. It was a new trend the Wall Street Journal referred to as "Black Midnight" in a 2011 headline. The move spurred high-profile petitions, including one from a Target worker who wanted the company to return to its 5 a.m. Friday opening so he could spend Thanksgiving with his fiance's family.
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