Mall of America to Close for Thanksgiving Day

Via ABC News:

Mall of America, the nation’s largest shopping mall anchored by Macy’s, H&M and others, has taken a stand against the growing trend of Thanksgiving shopping and will be closed on the turkey feast this year.

The center, based in Bloomington, Minnesota, has been open on Thanksgiving since 2012. But mall officials told The Associated Press it wants to offer workers time with their families.

The mall will re-open at 5 a.m. on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

“We think Thanksgiving is a day for families and for people we care about,” Jill Renslow, the mall’s senior vice president of marketing, told The Associated Press. “We want to give this day back.”

The Friday after Thanksgiving had long served as the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season. But over the past several years, Thanksgiving has become the new tradition as malls and stores try to outdo others to get their first dibs on the shopper at a time of increasing competition from online retailers. Many major stores like Macy’s, Target and J.C. Penney have opened increasingly earlier on Thanksgiving. But the move has also been controversial as many workers have voiced complaints and signed petitions that stores are putting profits over workers’ time to be with their families.

I’m so old I remember a holiday time before “Black Friday. Christmas shopping would still start the day after Thanksgiving, people just didn’t lose their minds about it. Even as the Black Friday hysteria grew, it still didn’t start until, you know, Friday. When Black Friday became Black “Cut Out From Thanksgiving Dinner Early for the Sales That Start On Thursday” Friday, I knew this country was in need of an intervention.

Thank you, Mall of America.

Honestly, I love electronics but I’ve never needed a television so badly that I would interrupt a quality beer and turkey nap to join a frothing horde to save $200 on one. I would much prefer to work hard for an extra $200 on a day that wasn’t Thanksgiving to buy one.

Thanksgiving shouldn’t go the way of Presidents’ Day and just become an excuse for retail sales. It would be nice if it remained a day of thanks and–I know I’m dreaming big here–reflection about how fortunate we are to live in America.

Where the malls will be opened the next day.