''BLACK THURSDAYS MACY’S'' Jumping The Gun This Black Friday! -

Macy’s will break a 155-year tradition of staying closed on Thanksgiving Day this holiday by opening at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Macy’s, is reversing its traditional policy of staying closed on Thanksgiving after noticing with dismay that much of the crowd that gathered for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade last year concluded the day by going on a collective shopping spree at rival department store Lord & Taylor, which opened its doors at 10 a.m. as an experiment and drank Macy’s milkshake. The old-school department stores were the last holdouts. Now Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Walmart, Gap, Toys “R” Us and Kmart are all opening Thanksgiving night (and in some cases, even Thanksgiving morning). For the past two years, Macy’s has opened its 800 stores nationwide at midnight following Thanksgiving to compete with retailers that opened at least part of Thanksgiving day, such as Walmart, Gap, Kmart, Sears, Old Navy, Target and Toys R Us. e Even if such stores hold off opening until 8 p.m., shoppers eager to join the football match of flattening your fellow citizens in pursuit of one of those $8 toaster ovens or $79 flatscreens will start lining up — when? 6 p.m.? 4? Hell, why not noon? Thanksgiving has always been a uniquely great American holiday, secular or reverent as you wish, a day set aside for family and gratitude. Because it has never been linked to exchanging gifts, it has remained free of commercialism. We treat it with the seriousness it deserves. As a people we travel great distances for Thanksgiving, often at the cost of the enormous stress wrought by congestion, because we know how important it is to show family members we love them. But couldn’t the national shopping orgy wait until the day after the holiday, that hideously named Black Friday? Shouldn’t we continue to keep this one Thursday (plus Christmas, the day set aside for consumption hangover) more about the heart than the shopping cart? Even if every other holiday has turned into an excuse for buying — given how Presidents’ Day has turned out, today’s schoolchildren can be forgiven for thinking it’s an occasion to honor the presidents of Target and Best Buy — Thanksgiving itself was supposed to be fenced off. Not anymore WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHOULD FOLKS BOYCOTT SHOPPING THANKSGIVING DAY OR YOU REALLY DON’T CARE? -