DAN REA'S THANKSGIVING CRY!

"One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." (Romans 14:5)

Dan Rea, for many years a popular television reporter in the Boston market, has been hosting an early evening radio talk show on Boston's major 50,000 watt WBZ radio for the past several years. Rea's program called "Nightside" gets into 38 states and 6 Canadian provinces.

I caught most of Dan's first hour as I drove home from Framingham to Canton last night. Dan Rea is pretty disturbed at the marginalization of Thanksgiving Day. For those who have not heard, several "big box" stores, including WalMart, Sears, and Target plan to open on Thanksgiving evening- some at 8 p.m. and some at 9 p.m. (Now, I understand that in Massachusetts due to rigid state laws, this won't happen. However, those stores will be opening at one minute after Midnight Friday morning in Mass.) Dan Rea is just a few years older than I am. We remember an era when Thanksgiving Day was a major event. It was not just a pre-Christmas holiday tacked in there to kick off the shopping season. It was the quintessential American holiday. While technically speaking not a "religious" holiday, it was sacred. And, since most "religious" folks did thank God on Thanksgiving Day, in that sense, it was a religious holiday. I remember that in the Baril household, Thanksgiving Day was very important. We'd have my grandmother and her sister Celia over for dinner. This was the fanciest dinner of the year, and only Christmas Day rivaled the "fanciness" of the dinner. You wouldn't even think of doing something like going shopping at a department store on Thanksgiving Day. When I was a little older, I played in the Canton High band, and of course we performed at the halftime shows of the high school football games on Thanksgiving morning. A lot of people may not understand the significance of New England Thanksgiving morning high school football games, but in a crazy sense, there was even something sacred about those!

About twenty years ago, all that began to be watered down by stores opening very early on Friday mornings for Christmas shopping sales. Now, "Black Friday" as a big shopping day is nothing new. I remember that one year in the 1960s, my mother and sister had gone shopping at Boston's "Downtown Crossing" on Black Friday and their black and white photo as "shoppers" appeared on the front page of The Boston Globe on the Saturday after Thanksgiving that year. But shopping began around 9:30 a.m. in those days. In the early '90s, the practice of stores opening at 6 a.m. started. A few years later, it was 4 a.m. Still a few years later, it was 1 a.m., and now it's going to be Thanksgiving Day itself! I don't think it's crazy to state that if this trend continues, within fifteen years, Thanksgiving Day will be no different from any other and all stores and malls will be open and packed with shoppers all day long on Thanksgiving Day. I wouldn't be surprised to then see the Thanksgiving Day high school football games moved to Black Friday nights.

Dan Rea has purposed to do something about this!

Last night, he began what he hopes to quickly become a national grass roots protest. He is urging that we just DON'T go shopping at any "big box" stores on Thanksgiving Day or on Black Friday. He's sort of open to a truce of people shopping after 9 a.m. on Friday, although I get the feeling he's not even crazy about that, and neither am I. I am posting this because I heartily agree with Dan Rea. I am asking you to not shop on Thanksgiving Day or on Black Friday. Now, understand that I do work on Thanksgiving Day. I work at a telephone answering service. On Thanksgiving Day this year, I will be working from 6 to 10 p.m. And I know nurses work, and firefighters and police and others work on Thanksgiving Day. But this whole crazy early Christmas shopping stuff which is encroaching on Thanksgiving is ridiculous and it's got to stop!