1. Its Intrusive: Not content to induce Americans to wake up bright and early the day after Thanksgiving, more retailers are now opening up on Thanksgiving Day. Their objective is clear -- to lure you away from your post-turkey familial commiserating with crap you could purchase on the 364 other days of the year. While Kmart has been open on Thanksgiving Day for 19 years (how's that working for them?), Sears and Wal-mart have both announced that they will be opening on Thanksgiving Day. Wal-mart will open at midnight. Sears will open from 7am to noon and has provided this purported explanation:

Sears stores will be open from 7 a.m. until noon "to provide families, especially those with active military members, an extra day to find the ideal gifts and ship them to family members across the country or overseas in time for the holidays," the Hoffman Estates-based company said in a statement. (Source)

Um yeah... riiiight. Thanksgiving is about stuffing your face and then laying around watching football while trading embarrassing stories of your childhood and avoiding intrusive questions from relatives about your life choices, not shopping for sport.

2. Retail workers deserve to spend time with their families too: And who do you think will be manning the registers when you trudge into the store on Thanksgiving Day? It will be hourly wage employees who were given the choice of being "flexible" about their schedules or not working at all. The managers and executives that made the decision to open on Thanksgiving Day or ridiculously early will not be ringing you up or dodging the stampedes on Friday morning.

3. Its Manipulative and Deceptive: Retailers know that they don't have the inventory to satisfy the desires of the massive crowds they are inducing to line up outside their stores. I resent that a retail establishment is forcing me to jump through hoops to give them my hard earned money. I am not a trained circus animal and there is nothing preventing them from offering the same product during regular business hours.

4. Black Friday Shoppers Don't Know How to Act: I guarantee you that once again some of y'all will be acting a plum natural fool on Friday morning pushing, shoving, falling down, stampeding, fighting and being pepper sprayed. Here the customers stampede and riot over laptops. Here customers come to blows over a PS3. In this memorable footage, we see a woman fall down, lose her wig, and replace it as fellow shoppers are trampled around her. We won't riot over civil rights violations, failing schools, out of control crime rates, or massive corporate bailouts, but we're riot over a discounted DVD player.

5. It's Not Worth Someone's Life: You know something is dangerous when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has to write a letter to the CEOs of America's major retailers. Even if there is an infinitesimally small chance that a worker would ever be injured at a Black Friday sale, that small risk is far too high. Since 2008, there have been three deaths tied to Black Friday sales. Two men shot each other to death in the checkout line at a Toys-R-US the same year that 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death by an out of control Black Friday crowds at a Long Island Wal-mart. It was all captured on video. The crowd didn't stop with Damour. Four others at the same store were injured including a pregnant woman. Even the emergency response personnel who were preforming CPR on Damour were stepped on. There is an entire page dedicated to Black Friday deaths and injuries. As of July 2010, Wal-Mart was challenging a $7,000 fine for safety violations related to Mr. Damour's death.

So this year I will be honoring the death of Jdimytai Damour by siting in the warmth and comfort of my home, while the rest of the country goes mad over a $5 DVD player.

Rest in Peace Jdimtai Damour.