Are YOU sacrificing families this Thanksgiving?

Big box stores are encroaching on Thanksgiving in their effort to commercialize Christmas. The ones who suffer the most are workers and their families, often poor, and with little ability to do anything about it. 

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The perpetrators aren't just the big box executives looking to squeeze extra profit by taking away holiday time from their workers-it's also the consumers who herd into stores searching for cheap Christmas gifts.
 
Despite their relatively weak bargaining position, workers are issuing a cry for help to their employers and the public. Widely circulating petitions have started on the internet and are being delivered to big box executives. Workers are asking people and bosses to respect their holiday time, which for some may be the only family time they get.

With the down economy, many retail workers are earning low wages and often work more than one job to make ends meet. The demand on their schedule leaves little time for family holidays or even dinners with spouses and children. And since many retail workers are women (two thirds of Walmart employees are women), being told to work on Thanksgiving just means (for some) they now have to report to work after helping with dinner.

Walmart is leading the pack when it comes to cutting into Thanksgiving. Their stores are open all day on Thanksgiving and will open for Black Friday shopping at 10 pm. That means many workers will start working at the same time the rest of us are sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner.
 
Of course, the retailers claim they are merely responding to the market, which is asking for earlier opening times. Retailers defend themselves saying that customers would rather go shopping late on Thursday than early Friday morning. Retailers are placing the blame for taking away Thanksgiving from workers and placing it squarely on the consumers. The long lines before stores on Thursday lend a lot of credibility to that argument.

As America becomes increasingly secularized and commercialized, human and family values are being sacrificed on the altar of commercial values. In a way, this is part of what the controversial Occupy Wall Street movement is about. While its influences are myriad, one agreeable theme is that human and family values should not be sacrificed for profits.

It is easy to blame the big box stores and so many other elements of our secular society for the problems we have today. God seems to live only in our pledge, and on our currency, and during political campaigns. Christ is being systematically removed from Christmas. And now, we are eroding family bonds by calling people to work to feed our obsession with consumerism.

Of course, we cannot do much to control what the corporate executives with their eyes on the bottom line choose to do. But we can choose what we do. And what will we do? Will we participate in this latest erosion of the family? Or will we stay home with ours, and strengthen our bonds instead?

The good news is, the decision is up to you.

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