Black Friday Shopping

It has become a Thanksgiving tradition at my house that, following dinner, all the womenfolk pour over the black Friday ads from the newspaper and plot our plan of attack.  We have been doing this for years.  Used to be, we could all go home, get some sleep and regroup at 2 or 3 Friday morning to begin our assault on both the stores and our checking accounts.  But now, if we have any hope of getting those super duper dirt cheap items, we would have to forgo sleep altogether and hit the shopping trail Thanksgiving day itself or at least get on the road late that night.

I'm just not sure I'm feeling this level of commitment.  Sure I like to save.  Give me a coupon, I'll clip it.  Show me a loss leader, I'll buy it.  But to spend my Thanksgiving day primarily preparing for my Christmas...not sure I'm on board with that.  

I enjoy my Thanksgiving.  Sharing a great meal with the people I love the most in this world.  Closing the gaps time and distance put on our relationships.  Laughing over the memories of yesterday all while creating the memories of tomorrow.  This isn't always going to be the way it is.  The kids will soon be grown and possibly off to other places for the holidays.  Our parents won't be with us forever either.  To give up such precious little time we all have together to save 50% on some electronic device, well, it just doesn't seem prudent to me. 

This year, I was most thankful for the time with my family.  Time is the one commodity I can't buy more of or substitute something else in it's place.  I can't get it back once it's gone, and I find the older I get, the quicker it's getting away from me.  I know the times are changing, and who knows, maybe next year you'll find me out loading up my shopping cart on Thanksgiving day too, but this year, I am glad I chose not to.

My mom, sister-in law, son's girlfriend and her sister and I did go shopping on Friday.  We didn't even bother going that early, leaving around 8 a.m.  We figured all the really great deals would be long gone.  But we had a good time.  We did get some serious shopping done and even managed to save some money.  And shockingly, we didn't even miss the craziness of most past black Friday adventures.  :-)