Here's some heartening news for those of you who can't think of a worse way to spend Thanksgiving Day than bargain hunting at your local mall: you're not alone.
For every store succumbing to pressure to remain open, there's an individual, group or business working to halt the 'holiday creep' threatening to turn Thanksgiving Day into an extension of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales bonanza.
Brian Rich, a marketing worker at a credit union, remembers feeling horrified back in 2011 when retail chains like Toys "R" Us, Kmart and Walmart decided to open their doors while shoppers' turkeys were still warm.
"That was the first year anyone really dared, as it was a big taboo," said Rich, who set up his Boycott Black Thursday page on Facebook that very week three years ago.
"There was something terribly offensive to me about this violent, gluttonous, materialistic shopping holiday eating up the one day we're just meant to be thankful for what we have."
Rich's page foundered for its first couple years, racking up 7,000 subscribers by 2013. Now, it's close to hitting 100,000, with each member pledging to boycott Thanksgiving as a shopping holiday.
"It's completely non-partisan," said Rich of the group's makeup. "We have people to the far, far religious right who believe the family is already under attack, and far left, pro-union individuals."
While some are content to sign a Facebook pledge, others are taking their action a step further.
Jillian Fisher, the daughter of a long-time Kmart worker, has started a petition to the retail giant on digital labor platform Coworker.org.
"Kmart has announced that it plans to keep its stores open for 42 hours straight from Thanksgiving though Black Friday this year," wrote Fisher. "It appears Kmart will be the store that is open the earliest on Thanksgiving."
"Kmart employees, like my Mom, will be forced to miss important time with their families on Thanksgiving. I’m asking Kmart to commit to allowing employees to request Thanksgiving day off and to rely only on volunteer employees."
She cleared her original goal of 200 signatures in support of her mother, a Kmart employee for 21 years, a day in. A week later, she's poised to pass 5,000.
Store chains like Costco, Publix and
There are, however, smaller retailers without the muscle to resist pressure from mall operators. For instance, shopping centers owned by Simon Malls, the largest operator in the country, will open on 8pm on Thanksgiving Day.
Amber Baumgart, an employee at a Wisconsin mall owned by Simon, started a Change.org petition to the company asking that malls (and, by extension, their stores) push their opening time to midnight so that workers and their families could spend more of Thanksgiving Day together.
So far, she's surpassed her goal of 30,000 signatures and climbing.
"At this point, I'm not exactly banking on things to change this close to Black Friday," she wrote. "However, I feel we are fighting for what's right and I am grateful enough that my voice is being heard by people throughout the country."
Other mall operators are already on Baumgart's side. This week, North American Properties, owner of Atlantic Station in midtown Atlanta and Avalon in Alpharetta, Ga., wrote a memo to tenants discouraging retail openings in favor of allowing workers the day off to enjoy the holiday.
"It’s not about desperately squeezing every last dollar out of consumers,” said Mark Toro, managing partner at North American Properties.
It remains debatable whether Thanksgiving Day store openings actually add enough coins to the coffers of the average store to justify disrupting the holiday.
Monmouth University economics and finance professor Steven Pressman has taken to calling Thanksgiving 'Red Thursday', a nod to its impact on balance sheets as competition heats up.
If just one or two store chains were open for business, they'd each clean up, he explained. As it stands, they're starting to cannibalize each other.
"Once they all start opening, they all start losing money," said Pressman. "They have to pay workers overtime to work the holiday. They have to pay utility bills. Net, it's a loss."
