BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -
Thanksgiving is a week from Thursday, but some local shoppers say they feel
like they're being forced to forget that holiday.
"I think we're kind of like forgetting the part as far as being
thankful, and just jumped to Christmas and just saying 'gimme, gimme,
gimme'," said future holiday shopper Grace Jones.
"What happens is, you don't get a chance to really appreciate fall
coming, and the holidays of the fall, and Thanksgiving and everything about it
before all of a sudden now you've got Christmas," said Nancy Pivik, who
feels like the Christmas shopping pressure is here too early.
LSU marketing professor Ofer Mintz says what seems like an early Christmas
craze, is simply retailers' response the nation slowly coming out of the
recession and a huge spike in holiday spending.
"For example, in Halloween, there ended up being more money spent on
Halloween costumes this year in adults and kids combined than there was on the
presidential election," said Mintz.
Mintz says new technology and social media blitzes is also forcing stores to
start thinking Christmas earlier than in the past.
"We have more competition now. There's online stores that take away
their profit margins, and so now they have to figure out, okay if they're
interested earlier...okay why not, we'll open earlier and see if that works,"
said Mintz.
Walmart for example will start their Black Friday sale hours at 8 p.m. on
Thanksgiving night. Some shoppers predict Christmas shopping will start even
earlier than that in near the future.
"I think it's going to become Black Thursday, honestly," said
Katie Zehnder, who understands the retail and consumer side of holiday
shopping. "I just think that Thanksgiving's going to become pretty
obsolete, and everyone's just going to be out shopping on Thanksgiving
day."
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