What time does the store open?

The turkey is all but gone, and all that's left are a few piles of mashed potatoes a lump of macaroni and cheese, and (fortunately) one more pumpkin pie.

I was perusing the stack of ads that came in the Thursday edition of our local newspaper here and made a shocking discovery: I don't have to wait until Friday morning to shop? You mean I can actually get off of the floor where I'm watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, leave the house and fight with people over parking spots and 'for only a few hours only' bargains at the local shopping mall?! What a great country!!

Or is it? I have to wonder just where we're headed when we can't NOT take one day out of our year and focus on being thankful (and all of the other things surrounding that notion). I mean c'mon! Do we reallly need a few more hours of available credit card machine exercise?

Am I anti-capitalism? Absolutely not! Am I anti-shopping? No way! Am I pro-spending some un-distracted time focusing on all of the things that we as a society should be thankful for? You bet.

So, are you a bad person if you went to K-mart on Thursday? Probably not--at least not for making the trip to the store on Thanksgiving--but I would ask where we're headed as a culture if we must have the opportunity to shop in lieu of spending more time at home or if you didn't want to be at home, then spending that time serving others.

I know this sounds preachy...I don't want it to. I just worry about the erosion of tradition here in America...