Luisa Mirabell and her daughter, Tessa, look at items for sale inside the Oxford Valley Mall on Black Friday.
Credit: Tom Sofield/NewtownPANow.com
The Oxford Valley Mall in nearby Middletown will be open to shoppers this Thanksgiving.
The mall, owned by Simon, is scheduled to open at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving and stay open for shoppers until 1 a.m. before it closes and re-opens to Black Friday shoppers at 6 a.m. While the mall will be open, not all the stores will be.
The opening of malls and other stores throughout the country during the Thanksgiving holiday has not been met without controversy. While Black Friday has long been reserved for scoring deals and kick-starting holiday shopping, going out for deals on Thanksgiving has typically been impossible as most stores have remained closed in light of the holiday reserved for being thankful for what one already has.
For the last several years though, as noted by Business Insider, retailers have tried to convince America that the holiday is just as much about shopping as it is about turkey.
The idea has received a lot of backlash, with more than 40 major retailers, including Barnes & Noble and Home Depot, choosing to honor the holiday by remaining closed.
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The recent trend of opening Black Friday style shopping to consumers on Thanksgiving has even sparked outrage on social media with pages created to boycott stores that choose to open, pledging that even retail workers deserve to have the day off with family and that the last thing the country needs is less family time.
“For the last two years I worked 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day at retail stores. Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday shopping are nothing but greed on both ends. The stores and the customers. I have seen some of the nastiest, cold, uncaring behavior from customers on both days. It truly disgusted me,” noted one Facebook user on the Boycott Thanksgiving Facebook page. “Thanksgiving and Christmas have been changed into holidays of materialism, selfishness and greed. The true spirit of love, thankfulness, togetherness, giving, great fullness, and family do not exist for many.”
According to Today.com, stores and shopping centers opening earlier and announcing their deals earlier, is a response to Black Friday turnout and shopping habits decreasing by 12 percent. Many stores, like Walmart and Amazon, have begun rolling out their Black Friday specials early, in what industry experts are predicting will become a ‘Black November’ string of sales rather than just a day of sales on Black Friday.
