What I Really Know About Day-After-Thanksgiving Shopping

It was Nov. 29, 1963, the day after Thanksgiving, in Youngstown, Ohio, where I was managing the Santa Photo Shop at our biggest department store. Soon after opening that morning, we had a long line of harried parents—their faces touched with sadness over President Kennedy’s assassination a week earlier—and their young children, who couldn’t wait for their turn with Santa. The line stretched from Santa’s Throne through the toy department and to the elevator doors. The parents were impatient to get on with their shopping. Santa was doing his best, without shortchanging any child.

At one point, the elevator doors opened, and a young boy in a wheelchair exited, pushed by an elderly gentleman, his grandfather, I assumed. The man looked at the long line, and said, “Should we come back another day, Johnny?”

The boy’s disappointment was obvious, but before he could respond, a young girl at the end of the line spoke up: “You can get in front of me.” The grandfather was touched by the child’s generosity, thanked her and wheeled Johnny in front of her.

Then the next child in line spoke up: “Here, get in front of me.” This happened again and again, as one child after another gave up a place in line. I heard no complaints from the parents as their children chose to wait a bit longer for their turn. I sincerely hope those children got an extra gift from Santa that year. I’m certain they each earned a smile from their God.

Shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, you just might run smack up against the spirit of the season.

By Judith D. Ackerman, Sanford, NC

As far as I am concerned, there is just one peril to after-Thanksgiving-shopping: you may establish a tradition that will break your heart when it can no longer be maintained.

For more than 20 years, my daughter and I scoured the ads on Thanksgiving Day, plotted our itinerary and synchronized our watches and alarm clocks. At five a.m. on Friday, we dressed in comfortable clothes and shoes, grabbed a quick cup of coffee and headed out. We shivered in lines so we would be amongst the first 100 shoppers and would get a bag of treasures or sometimes a certificate for merchandise. We joked with other people in the line about the insanity of what we were doing and shared a brief camaraderie with them. We laughed at the foolish frenzy as we and what seemed like hundreds of others attacked each bin of marked-down something. We accompanied the piped-in holiday music with unabashed abandon. We oohed and aahed – and sometimes tsk-tsked – over the elaborate holiday decorations.

By ten a.m., our feet were aching and our arms were loaded down with packages, so we headed off to the nearest coffee shop and enjoyed a long breakfast with lots more coffee and some heart-to-heart talk. We had great fun. We shared a closeness often missing in our separate busy lives. When family members said we were nuts, we just smiled.

Now distance and time have put a period to this wonderful day we spent together each year. Still, my daughter wrote that this year she plans on taking my 15-year-old granddaughter on an early morning excursion the day after Thanksgiving. Maybe traditions don’t have to end after all.

By Roslyn L. Katz (Carlsbad, CA)

My mother never met a bargain she did not like. Although she always prepared a scrumptious Thanksgiving feast, she did not really begin her holiday until the next day when she could gorge on sales. Ma knew the busiest shopping day of the year came with its inherent perils, but she turned those negatives into positives by making a game of it for both her and me.

Her fake fur coat and faux leather gloves made Ma the queen, while my party dress, black patent leather shoes, and white gloves with pearl buttons at the wrist made me the princess. Together we rode our horseless chariot, the bus, to downtown Pittsburgh and entered our castle: Kaufmann’s Department Store. Ma, tightly holding my hand, swept through the aisles to the table surrounded by the most people. That, she explained in her regal voice, is where the best bargains could be found. Ma never fought other shoppers, even if she really wanted that last pair of striped pajamas in Dad’s size. Ma told me that it is not lady-like to fight, yet she would never relinquish an item once she had it firmly in her grip.

Once we finished buying for my father, the king, and my brother, the prince, we took a break for lunch. Instead of standing at the Milk Shake Bar for a burger and shake, Ma took me to the Tic Toc Restaurant in Kaufmann’s. A queen and princess, she explained, need to rest their feet and enjoy being served. After leaving a tip fit for royalty, we rode the escalator to our favorite department – women’s wear.

Ma and I loaded our arms with dresses, skirts, blouses, and sweaters. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon playing dress-up and admiring ourselves in the three-sided mirrors of the dressing room. We left our shopping castle with our booty of belts and blouses, socks and sweaters, lingerie and linens.

Time and age eventually ended our post-Thanksgiving fantasy, but not even my mother’s death in March 2007 could destroy how I feel about this majestic woman. While others might fear shopping on this busy day, Ma embraced it as an opportunity to create magic with me, her daughter.

By Ronna L. Edelstein (Pittsburgh, PA)

Years ago, I relished the thought of the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping. It was a combination of the thrill of victory - getting a parking place and great deals...and the agony of defeat, losing out on both. I had the stamina and drive to get to Macy's before the doors opened. I'd shop all day, only stopping for an occasional restroom break and maybe a quick burger. I was not obsessive or aggressive. I just loved the day and its energy. Now the thought of the insanity, the crowds, the cell phones, the rudeness of people is far too much for me. I'm 57, but have learned that I now have options. Will the sales disappear the next day? Probably not. Can I shop online and save? Probably so. Do I miss the fun of the day? Definitely.

Like so many other things that brought joy to my life, they have past only to be replaced by others. I also realize how important my time is. I work for a city municipality and volunteer at an animal shelter. I read, garden and travel with my husband and our dog. Putting myself into mall madness doesn't need to be part of my life anymore. In many ways, I miss the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping. However, I've found other ways to find joy such as caring for homeless dogs, bowling three strikes in a row and putting in a cactus garden.

The sales will come back again. My time, however, will not. Its a matter of finding what is important. I'm still working on what counts. And for now, I have to time to discover that.

By Denise Gee (San Clemente, CA)

Even though day-after-Thanksgiving shopping has been a treasured tradition for my oldest daughter and me for many years, at age 63, I am staying home this year.

Each Thanksgiving after dinner the large dining table would be cleared and my daughters and I would peruse the newspaper ads, gather wish lists from the family and plan our strategy for the big day. By 5:00 a.m. she would arrive for our 40- minute drive into the city to be at the store of our choice when the doors were opened. My granddaughter would stay with Grandpa and enjoy breakfast in town.

We would walk miles, endure standing in long lines to check-out (sometimes for nearly an hour), drive several miles between stores constantly checking our lists and coupons striving for the best bargains. Finding safe parking places and getting home without damage to our vehicle or ourselves was our uppermost concern.

Doing heavy-duty shopping in a mall setting means carrying packages or making several trips to the car. As the day wore on, giving a smile and kind word to sales-clerks became more difficult. Living in the mid-west we always had to keep the weather in mind and make sure we had safe roads for the drive home. It would be dark by the time we arrived home. All the packages, stacked to the roof of the cargo area, had to be sorted between us and carried in or to her car. Invariably we would mix up a few of them.

When my granddaughter became a teenager, she came with us on our shopping day. We had such a good time that my daughter-in-law joined us. Soon my other daughter was taking the day off and joining the group! It became a great time for the "girls." I have decided to let them stand in line, jostle the crowds, debate with sales-clerks, find parking places, watch the weather and drive safely. I'm staying home with Grandpa and my two little grandchildren and do my shopping on-line.

Carol Maguire (Logan IA)

Thanksgiving, 1954 was Vince’s and my first big holiday after a February wedding. I was pregnant with our first child. On Friday we decided to go Christmas shopping for our family members … his mother, 2 brothers and 2 sisters-in-law and my father, 3 sisters, 2 brothers-in-law, and a brother, if I could find him!

We were living in Hollywood, California at the time on De Longpre Avenue. Early evening, we walked arm-in-arm up to Sunset Blvd., headed east to Vine Street and then north to Hollywood Blvd. By time we hit the main drag, the stars were beginning to shine. It was cool, but we were dressed for the weather. We were not alone. The streets were crowded with other shoppers.

We began our shopping at the closest store, the Broadway. It was nice and comfy inside. We began meandering through the aisles, mostly window shopping, looking for whatever might catch our fancy, because we had not made a list. After a couple hours of leisurely looking around and often being shoved aside by hurried shoppers or reaching for something only to have it snatched from our grasp by someone else, we found the experience not exactly what we had envisioned.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was an incident where someone ran a shopping cart up my ankle, shoving me into a counter, pregnant belly first, which may be the reason our first born later took up Tae Kwon Do. I know how it affected my husband. He pulled me aside and said, “Let’s go home before somebody gets really hurt. We have a Sears catalogue, don’t we?” “Yes,” I replied.

“Good! We can sit down, maybe tomorrow night, look through the catalogue, pick out what we want for each person and order it. Someone else can deliver it and I won’t have to pick you up off the floor after you get run over.”

So every year after that, including during four more pregnancies, we went through the Sears catalogue before Thanksgiving and made a list. The very next day I would call Sears and place the Christmas order. Within a few days we received everything. Then each night after the dumplings were in bed, I could quietly pull out a few packages, wrap them and store them away for the big day when Santa would surprise everyone!

By Mary Santomauro (Stagecoach, NV)

For years I adroitly avoided even leaving the house on the day after Thanksgiving, partly because I was still cleaning up the clutter left after the “annual stuffing” but mostly because I don’t shop for pleasure, I shop for need. However, one year my daughter suggested that we throw ourselves into the fray just to “experience the ambiance”. So, like giggling high school girls getting ready for our first prom, we were up at 4 a.m., no long lists but our charge cards at the ready just in case we found a bargain we couldn’t pass up. Our husbands just moaned, turned over and went back to sleep, visions of dollar signs in their heads.

Once at the mall and in our chosen store I was, using a term coined a few years ago, in “shock and awe”. Shelley, being many years younger than I, headed out into the masses while I participated in my favorite pastime…observing fellow members of the human race. Manners were on hold for the day with pushing and shoving apparently all part of the fore mentioned “ambiance”. Bits of music from cell phones rang out constantly. Friends and/or family calling to report on their “find”, where they were, where to meet, some not even at the same mall let alone the same store. I only presume they were in the same city.

My frugal mother, who was raised during the depression, shopped cautiously and taught me that “a bargain is no bargain if you didn’t need it in the first place”. I had to wonder how many of “my” shoppers ended up with a “bargain” they didn’t want or need (or maybe, afford) and which probably would end up in a yard sale the next summer. As for me, Mom would have been proud…I went home with no shopping bags, my cash flow untouched and credit cards unused.

By Kaye Moser

For over 30 years, my best friend and I have shopped on the Friday after Thanksgiving. When we first started this tradition, we would take a bus to downtown Columbus and shop at the department stores and the newest city mall. Back then, it was all about the gifts and the sales. We carried around special coupons, made lists and helped each other find that perfect gift, stopping only when hunger or nature forced us to.

Over the years, families and lists grew smaller. Downtown stores closed and we moved our excursion to the suburbs. Our priorities changed. I moved about two hours away so the trip became more about our time together and less about the perfect gift. Our husbands would spend the day golfing and meet us when the stores closed for dinner. As we got older, our sit down breaks became more frequent. Oh sure, we still got to the mall at 6AM, but we would stop for breakfast first! We now shopped for ourselves, hitting the shoe, perfume and the jewelry departments first. We would try on shoes we did not need, spritz perfume we would never use, and look at gems far above our budget. We were together as girlfriends, and this is what girlfriends do. The rest of the year we see each other occasionally, but this day always reminded us of the deep friendship we have. We come together once a year for this and it seems as though no time has passed at all.

Last year my friend was ill. Although she has made a complete recovery, it was the first time since 1975 we have not shopped. I realized that the shopping was just an excuse to spend time together and just be girlfriends for awhile. I have made a promise to myself that we will not wait to get together, we will spend more time more often. Of course, we will always have a good breakfast first!

By Peggy Miller

The AARP Bulletin's "What I Really Know" column comes from our readers. Each month we solicit short personal essays on a selected topic and post some of our favorites in print and online.