Time with family is priceless

We are just days away from one of our favorite holidays of the year, Thanksgiving. We love everything about it. From its focus on gratitude and giving to the extra time it gives us with family, we love this time of feasting, football and counting blessings.

More and more, Thanksgiving is becoming less and less about family and blessings and increasingly about the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season. We love Christmas, too, but not at the expense of Thanksgiving.

Christmas has been co-opted by corporate America as the fiscal year’s profit pinnacle. In fact, the Friday after Thanksgiving has been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

But this year, retailers such as Target, have announced plans to begin the Christmas shopping season at 9 p.m., Thanksgiving Day — before the mashed potatoes and turkey have even cooled.

A group of about 212,000 Target customers, employees and shareholders signed a petition Wednesday on Change.org arguing that the store’s decision encourages people to work and/or shop on Thanksgiving when they could be at home with their families.

We are glad to hear that Target says less than one-third of employees will work on Thanksgiving, and that those who do will receive time-and-a-half their hourly rate, plus additional compensation for the hours worked on those two days.

In the newsroom and in other departments within the Frontiersman’s operation, our employees are all too familiar with the need to work through holidays to make sure the paper is ready to print and deliver to our customers.

On Thanksgiving, to make sure our employees can spend time with their families, we move the publication date for the Friday paper to Thursday. In the newsroom, that means we’ll wrap up the A and B sections of the Frontiersman by 6 p.m., Nov. 21 and have that evening and all of Thanksgiving Day to spend enjoying our families.

For the first time in several years, we’ve also managed a plan that looks like most of the newsroom, printing and circulation departments at the Frontiersman will be home with their families on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, too. That’s a welcome change from past years when our families have delayed Christmas dinner until we’re home from the office, or they wait patiently to open gifts while we read the last story for the front page on our iPhone Christmas morning.

We think that’s why the prospect of spending Thanksgiving Day at home means so much to us; we don’t always get to be with our families on these important days.

To us, no dollar saved or gifts purchased on Black Thursday/Friday can touch the lasting value of spending time with those we love.