I’ve always felt bad for Thanksgiving. It’s like the redheaded stepchild of holidays. Almost as soon as Halloween ends, retailers start putting out Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving has even happened. Not only that, but the holiday couldn’t be more awkwardly placed. For most of us college students, we go home for about three or four days to celebrate the holiday, then come right back to school so we can start stressing about final exams before returning home once again a little over two weeks later.

Thanksgiving just doesn’t get the love and attention it deserves, and I think that became especially apparent this year on Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving is infamous for inciting millions to wake up at the crack of dawn and buy ridiculously unnecessary goods at marked down prices. It marks the beginning of the shopping season for Christmas, and it certainly begins things with a bang. In past years I’ve seen video footage of people being trampled as they run into stores because people were so intent on finding the best deals before anyone else gets to them. I usually try to ignore how antithetical such behavior is to the Christmas spirit, but this year I was shocked to find that a significant number of stores were foregoing the early bird specials and instead chose to open their doors to shoppers the midnight following Thanksgiving.

This invasion of Thanksgiving’s sovereignty appalls me. If we’re just going to use Thanksgiving to start camping out for all the best deals, why even have the holiday in the first place? If retailers keep pushing back the beginning of the holiday shopping season at this rate, I fear we’ll end up on the verge of a perpetual Christmas season. I guess in some ways that wouldn’t be so bad; I find that a lot of people after all tend to enjoy Christmastime. But again, this is a season that’s supposed to be all about giving and appreciation of friends and family, and a lot of us seem to be forgetting this crucial point.

Last week at a Wal-Mart in Southern California a woman allegedly doused her fellow shoppers with pepper spray so she could secure for herself a special Xbox bundle. As a gamer myself, normally I’d never be one to separate a person from their Xbox, but this sort of behavior is downright deplorable. I’m not sure how good of a deal this Xbox bundle was, but could it really have been worth using abusive riot control techniques like that to essentially torture fellow shoppers and keep them at bay? Even if all of the video game systems did sell out that day, I’m certain more would ship to the store by the end of the year. These aren’t defunct or rare brands that a lot of these shoppers are hunting for. They’re every-day products that one could easily find at slightly higher prices any other time of the year. I simply don’t understand what could compel a person to go out and attack fellow human beings like that.

Both Thanksgiving and the holiday season in general encourage us to reflect upon our good fortunes and be grateful for what’s been given to us. Gift-giving can certainly be a great way to express how much you might care for another person, but when the obsession over finding all the flashiest presents at the best deals overshadows the desire to simply do something nice for someone in your life, then there’s definitely a problem here that needs to be addressed. A day of good Black Friday sales might indicate a stronger economy for us, but what does it say about our moral fiber? I urge everyone to consider why we celebrate these holidays in the first place; we glorify ourselves every other time of the year, so Thanksgiving and the holiday season make for a good time to think about the significance of our loved ones in our lives.

Brandon Bub is a sophomore majoring in English and edits The Daily Campus opinion column. He can be reached for comment at [email protected]