Buying Thanksgiving

Holiday cartoon depicting how Christmas is overshadowing Thanksgiving.

Every year, it's the same. Families gather on the third Thursday of November for a grand feast and to give thanks to all they have and are blessed with.

Later, the families pull a "Gone with the Wind" and take a nap in the same house together right after they had their full of food, if they didn't already watch a football game.

After resting, they would all head down to the nearest or most popular department or high-tech store to stand in line and wait to go in to take part in the big sales as the Christmas season officially begins.

But this year, it seems as though materialism is more overshadowing Thanksgiving.

For the first time ever, Wal-Mart, as well as others, opened their stores at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving night for the customers to start the sales.

This actually scares me. Stores are opening their stores up earlier into the holiday so they can get a head start on sales. It won't be long until store sales happen all day on Thanksgiving and families forget to keep what we do on that holiday a tradition.

As for my holiday season, my sister went to visit my other sister in New Orleans for the holiday so it was just my parents and I celebrating here in Maryland.

On Thanksgiving morning, we watched the 86th Annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV, as it was traditional. I didn't enjoy all that much. It had too many pre-teen celebrities and the parade isn't usually all that children oriented like it felt this year. For once, I watched the televised Dog Show that followed the parade. The dogs were so adorable.

Afterwords, we went to the chow hall on Fort Meade where we enjoyed are dinner in the mid afternoon.

That's funny how the early to middle afternoon is when families usually have Thanksgiving dinner. Must be that way to get enough rest before having to go to the many Black Friday sales at midnight.

After we prayed, we ate all the essentials: turkey, gravy, stuffing, ham, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, green beans, with mac & cheese, salad, and soup.

We left to go home and take our naps. My mom went to Wal-Mart at 8 p.m. and I went to Best Buy at midnight. I got in line at 10:30 p.m. and didn't get in until half an hour past midnight. All the sales I wanted to take advantage of were buy the 32 gb 5th generation iPod touch and get a free $50 gift card and buy a $100 iTunes gift card for only $80.

My rule for Black Friday is only take part if there is something you really want to buy and you must take advantage of the amazing sale. Also go by yourself in your own car so you and only you control when you leave in case you get annoyed by the crazy, bustling scenes.