No holiday for many

Forget the so-called war on Christmas, which exploits actual and (more often) imagined religious divisions for political gain and media filler. America's greatest secular and therefore nearly universal holiday, Thanksgiving, has become a much more intriguing battleground. The conflict is between general goodwill and cutthroat commercialism, the two faces of the Thanksgiving-Black Friday complex staring at each other across a disputed border.

No amount of political correctness has prevented any American from celebrating Christmas. But Black Friday's incursion on Thanksgiving, fueled by corporate and popular avarice and desperation, really is keeping more and more hundreds of thousands - namely, our legion retail workers - from celebrating a holiday.

While Black Friday was once thought of as the day after Thanksgiving, the latter is increasingly the day before Black Friday - known, with appropriately melancholy undertones, as Gray Thursday. Retailers that once hesitated to push their shopping frenzies past the midnight barrier have now crossed the pumpkin-pie line en masse. This year, they were led by Kmart's opening at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving, followed by Old Navy and Michaels crafts at 4 p.m. Thursday; Best Buy, Toys "R" Us, J.C. Penney, and Dick's Sporting Goods at 5 p.m.; and Walmart, Target, Macy's, Sears, and Kohl's, at 6 p.m.

If it sounds as if the whole mall will be open by the time most of us sit down to the year's biggest dinner, that's because in many cases, it will. In fact, shopping centers in Western Pennsylvania and elsewhere have threatened to fine stores that don't open on Thanksgiving.

It takes a helping of corporate responsibility to resist such collective commercial hysteria. Fortunately, many chains are showing a measure of patriotism and compassion by sending their workers home for the holiday - including Costco, Home Depot, Marshalls, T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Barnes & Noble.

Despite this brave resistance and the forward march of online retail - Amazon started its sales a week ahead of time - the rite's power over shoppers' imaginations remains strong. A half-century after the term was coined by Philadelphia civil servants dreading the annual crush of suburban Christmas shoppers, can anything stop Black Friday's encroachment on a cherished holiday?

It's been argued that, like an arms race, Black Friday's metastasis is the result of rational individual decisions having an irrational collective result, a situation that sometimes requires government action. But only three New England states maintain vestigial "blue laws" that prohibit Thanksgiving shopping outright.

If any force can tame Black Friday, it's likely to be more cultural than political. More than 80 percent of Americans didn't shop on Thanksgiving last year, according to the Consumerist, and more than 60 percent disapproved of the practice - including, remarkably, 42 percent of those who participated in it. If more of us shopped according to our convictions, more stores would certainly sign on to a truce with Thanksgiving.