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Rongbing Xu
EN140
Alexis Long
11 December 2015
The End of “Black Friday”
Although some people are afraid of berserk shopping, although some people have
questioned that Thanksgiving is changed to Shopping Festival, there is still a large number of
people involved. People all want to take advantage of this opportunity to save a severely. “Black
Friday”, the fourth Friday in November, the hugest day of shopping in Thanksgiving holiday. On
this day, dealer desperately discount and people desperately shop. Because malls use red to note
profit and black to note loss, so they called it as “Black Friday”. I like shopping too, so discount
also has the great attraction to me. But for me, I don’t think the “Black Friday” is really
necessary and there is no need to exist in the Thanksgiving.
The first reason why I said that is because the Thanksgiving Day. It should be a family
day; I do not know since when it just become a day for shopping: On “Black Friday”, the crazy
scene that people wrapped in clothes and sit up all the night, squeezed in the door at one moment
like the flood, even fought only for a discount good has disappeared. However, on this
Thanksgiving Day, there are manufacturers made a crazy decision: They would be closed.
“When we announced our decision to close our doors and head outside on ‘Black
Friday’,” said Jerry Stritzke, CEO of the chain that specializes in outdoor and fitness gear. “We
think that ‘Black Friday’ has gotten out of hand” (Lam).
Jerry Stritzke recently wrote an open letter to consumers on the company’s website, “We
do not open on ‘Black Friday’. The company chose to close all 143 stores on ‘Black Friday’ and
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invite all employees to go outdoors. “On November 26 and 27, all 12,000 employees will get
paid vacation. Stores will be reopened on November 28. Online orders are also beginning to be
reprocessed” (CNNMoney). In order to let this activity to seem more attractive, many nation
states parks decided to let visitors to be free to play, including Redwoods State Park and two
national parks in Washington State.
REI company is not only one “crazy”. There are some retailers, such as Costco,
Nordstrom, and the biggest office supplies mall, Staples also have been rejected Thanksgiving
business.
As one of the year’s most important holiday, on Thanksgiving Day, the whole family
sitting together and eating turkey is a centuries-old tradition. But now many malls decided to
open early, they make some consumers not have time to eat the turkey with the family. People
