In case you don’t know it, it’s stores like Walmart that took the Christ out of Christmas. Not the progressive who are trying to be inclusive of Jews, Muslims and others by using the hated “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

What am I talking about?

Black Friday, that’s what.

Black Friday wasn’t always Black Friday. No the day after American Thanksgiving has only recently been turned into the kick-off event of the Christmas shopping season. And, because merchants could not control themselves or the many shopping idiots who lined up at their stores before daybreak, the day has been inching ever earlier and earlier until a couple of years ago, when some stores actually opened on the evening of Thanksgiving, so they could give obsessed shoppers an even earlier head start.

Good grief!

First of all, any even slightly-rational shopper knows that there are no deals to be had on Black Friday that won’t also be available later in the shopping season. The best deals, of course, are to be had after Christmas.

Second of all, that’s practically a whole month of shopping. A whole month of shopping isn’t enough? You have to disturb the Thanksgiving Holiday in order to go shopping even earlier? What kind of an asshole thought of this? And what kind of an idiot falls for it?

According to the Consumerist website, here are some of the major stores that will be open on Thanksgiving:

These stores are all despicable. I’m sorry. It’s sad enough that police, fire, emergency medical technicians, and certain doctors and nurses and other emergency room personnel have to be available and at work on Thanksgiving. But the sales staff of major department stores?

This is why you can’t trust industry to regulate itself. There’s a simple solution for this: every state in the Union should enact a very simple statute that simply says that no retail store may open for business until 9:00 AM on the day after Thanksgiving.

End of story.