There will be no black in my Friday

More than a quarter century ago, when I was a newspaper reporter in Fall River, Mass., I was assigned to go to the local mall the day after Thanksgiving, to chronicle what was, even then, the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season.

As I recall, Black Friday had not yet acquired its moniker in the mid 1980s, but it was a big deal for retailers nonetheless. Since then, of course, the phenomenon has only gotten worse. The day now has a suitably ominous-sounding name. It has a religiously zealous following. It has a tragic history of people being trampled by mobs of shoppers. And it has overshadowed Thanksgiving itself in the hype department.

It's bad enough that we have to suffer through this rampant display of consumerism year after year, but now more and more stores are opening on Thanksgiving as well, some of them early in the morning. Whereas the media once engaged in feverish speculation about whether retailers will fare well on Black Friday, with the attendant gum flapping about its status as a bellwether of economic vitality, now everyone's in a lather about how much cheap, plastic crap people will buy on Thanksgiving too.

All of which leaves me with at least one thing to be thankful for on Black Thursday (aka Thanksgiving). There's no way in hell I'll set foot in a mall on Thanksgiving or the day after, no matter how sensational the sales are when the stores open their doors to crazed bargain hunters in the ungodly predawn darkness. And for that, I am grateful.