I hate Black Friday. The very idea of it, never mind the actual thing itself. It tears us from the peace, quiet, and, yes, thankfulness of Thanksgiving, and hurls us willy-nilly into the "shuffling madness of the locomotive breath" that is the Holiday Shopping Season. There is something fundamentally wrong with our economy if even our largest Retailers depend on Christmas gift buying for up to 40% of their yearly receipts. It makes them look a lot more like souvenir Shoppes at a Tourist resort than soundly-run enterprises.
Desperate for Holiday $$ or not, why couldn't they slowly amp things up by having 'Light Gray Friday', followed by 'Gray Saturday', and then 'Really Dark Gray Sunday'? I know this makes me sound like a Grinch, but I would very much like to see a social compact (or a harsh Law, to be brutally honest) that there be no Christmas Decorations or Music in stores until the Sunday after Thanksgiving.