There was a time in America, not that long ago, where you had to really be prepared for the holidays. Find yourself short of cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving morning and you’d better hope your neighbor had a spare can of Ocean Spray, because the groceries stores were closed. And if you were going to grandma’s house for the big Turkey feast, you had better gas up Wednesday night, because most gas stations along the route would probably be closed.

It’s not that grocery stores and gas stations were making money hand-over-fist in those days, and could afford to blow off a day of sales; it’s just that Thanksgiving was one of the few days of the year where the nation took a collective day off to give thanks, to celebrate the fall harvest, to spend time with family and friends. It was a day to eat, drink, and be merry and thankful. Well, of course it still is for many folks, but this year you won’t have trouble finding cranberry sauce or gasoline.

Or Big Screen TV’s or iPads iPhones or laptops or toys or golf clubs or anything else you want need or plan to give as a gift. Black Friday? That’s for chumps! The savvy shoppers are getting that bird in the oven and their butts to the mall early on Thanksgiving Day. Sears will open its doors at 7 a.m.; others will open even earlier. But in a country where the mall Christmas decorations are by Halloween and radio stations start playing Christmas Music right after Election Day, what could we expect? Retailers are nervous about the trailing recession’s impact on the all-important holiday sales, consumers desperately searching for bargains will be out in force to get them. Now, this is America, the land of the free, so if you want to shop first and feast later, you have the right to do so.

Call me old fashioned, but it just seems wrong to me. Why, exactly, do we have to move Black Friday, which has long been the kickoff to the holiday shopping season, up by 24 hours? Black Friday is followed by a Saturday and a Sunday. Couldn’t those 72 hours be enough for the bargain hunters, allowing people who work for the grocery stores and the chain stores and the big box stores the same respite everyone else gets on Thanksgiving Day? Research shows it’s the young generation-the 18 to 34-year-olds-who’ll be whipping out the plastic and cash on Thanksgiving morning. It’s almost as if we’ve lost a whole generation to commercialism.

Well, you won’t find me at the mall or Costco or any retail outlet on Thanksgiving Day. I’m protesting this commercial onslaught, by frying turkeys on my patio, watching college football, and sharing the turkey dinner and the best wine I can get my hands on with family and good friends. Besides, it always seems to me that the best deals are had closer to Christmas, when retailers have more merchandise than they can sell, and they know it. Stay home Thursday and enjoy the day. Give thanks and share the spirit. And if you’re out of cranberry sauce call me; my wife always makes too much of the stuff anyway.