This week­end is Thanks­giv­ing week­end, tra­di­tion­al­ly one of the longest week­ends of the year (owing to Thanks­giv­ing always falling on a Thursday).

It’s also tra­di­tion­al­ly the begin­ning of the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son, and is thus a very impor­tant time of year for retailers.

Since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, major retail chains have gone to increas­ing­ly extreme lengths to draw in foot traf­fic the day after Thanks­giv­ing, a day that has come to be known in the Unit­ed States and around the world as Black Fri­day.

Many read­ers may not be aware that the term Black Fri­day orig­i­nat­ed in Philadel­phia in the 1960s, and ini­tial­ly referred not to mer­chants pass­ing the break-even point (climb­ing out of the red and into the black), but to the heavy traf­fic on the city’s streets, which cre­at­ed headaches for law enforcement.

Philadel­phia busi­ness­es did­n’t like the con­no­ta­tions of the nick­name “Black Fri­day”, and for a time, they pro­mot­ed a dif­fer­ent moniker: Big Friday.

But their alter­na­tive nev­er caught on with the press or the pub­lic. Black Fri­day stuck, and nowa­days, retail­ers are among its biggest pro­mot­ers. Many chains spend sig­nif­i­cant resources adver­tis­ing their Black Fri­day sales. They open their doors ear­ly (like at 4 AM) and offer what have become known as door­busters — big-tick­et or hot items that they sell at a loss in order to entice peo­ple into their stores.

Exec­u­tives at some chains are so eager to see Thanks­giv­ing week­end sales get start­ed that they’re order­ing employ­ees to report to work on Thanksgiving.

No, I’m not mak­ing this up:

Remem­ber the hal­cy­on days of 2011, when Thanks­giv­ing involved turkey, giv­ing thanks and hang­ing out with your fam­i­ly all day — and then lots of peo­ple got up at the crack of dawn the next day for Black Fri­day shopping?

Appar­ent­ly those were the good old days.

Tar­get and Wal­mart will both be open­ing the evening of Thanks­giv­ing to kick off hol­i­day shop­ping deals, with Tar­get announc­ing Mon­day they’ll open at 9 p.m. on Thanks­giv­ing; Wal­mart and Sears will do the same thing, but an hour ear­li­er — start­ing their “Black Fri­day” deals at 8 PM on Thanksgiving.

So much for Thanks­giv­ing being a fam­i­ly holiday.

Thank­ful­ly, Tar­get and Wal-Mart’s deci­sion to force their employ­ees to come into work on Thanks­giv­ing has result­ed in a back­lash. More than 30,000 peo­ple have signed a Change.org peti­tion urg­ing Wal-Mart to can­cel its plans to open on Turkey Day. A sim­i­lar peti­tion to Tar­get has amassed ten times as many sig­na­to­ries.

On a relat­ed note, many Wal-Mart work­ers are join­ing part in an effort to threat­en a strike on Black Fri­day. Wal-Mart exec­u­tives have become increas­ing­ly con­cerned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a wide­spread strike, and have now iron­i­cal­ly filed a com­plaint with the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board against the Unit­ed Food and Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW), which rep­re­sents work­ers at many of Wal-Mart’s com­peti­tors and has been try­ing to orga­nize Wal-Mart for years.

(NPI stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our broth­ers and sis­ters at UFCW; we salute them for all their efforts to hold Wal-Mart, the Beast of Ben­tonville, accountable).

The Cana­di­an non­prof­it AdBusters, which gave the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment its name, is once again urg­ing its sup­port­ers to not shop at all on Fri­day and instead observe “Buy Noth­ing” Day. Their pitch:

Until we chal­lenge the entrenched val­ues of cap­i­tal­ism – that the econ­o­my must always keep grow­ing, that con­sumer wants must always be sat­is­fied, that imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion is imper­a­tive – we’re not going able to fix the gigan­tic psy­cho-finan­cial-eco cri­sis of our times.

The jour­ney towards a sane sus­tain­able future begins with a sin­gle step. It could all start with a per­son­al chal­lenge, such as this: make a vow to your­self to par­tic­i­pate in Buy Noth­ing Day this year. This Novem­ber 23rd, go cold turkey on con­sump­tion for 24 hours … see what hap­pens … you just might have an unex­pect­ed, eman­ci­pa­to­ry epiphany!

We think the con­cept of “Buy Noth­ing Day” is com­pelling, giv­en our soci­ety’s unhealthy infat­u­a­tion with con­sump­tion. But for those who are not as social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious, there’s actu­al­ly anoth­er good rea­son to stay home, sleep in, and skip the dark, cold, and (very pos­si­bly) rainy lines in park­ing lots: Research shows the best deals of the sea­son aren’t avail­able on Black Friday.

Decide.com, a research firm spe­cial­iz­ing in track­ing the prices of elec­tron­ics, has ana­lyzed years of price data and con­clud­ed that Black Fri­day — along with its dig­i­tal coun­ter­part, “Cyber Mon­day” — are over­rat­ed:

Plan­ning to get in line for Black Fri­day? Expect­ing to spend next Mon­day glued to your com­put­er? Boy, have we got some big advice for you: Sleep in on Black Fri­day and skip the Cyber Mon­day hype.

That was the results of our exhaus­tive research into his­tor­i­cal prices of hol­i­day items over the past two years. We found that the deals you see aren’t deals at all. Nine of the 11 major con­sumer prod­uct cat­e­gories aver­aged a low­er price dur­ing this week lead­ing up to Black Fri­day and the week right before Christmas.

We tracked mil­lions of price move­ments from dozens of the top retailers—including Ama­zon, Best Buy, Sears, Wal­mart and more– dur­ing the 2010 and 2011 hol­i­day shop­ping sea­son. From all that data we com­piles a list of prod­ucts you’re bet­ter off buy­ing at oth­er times dur­ing the holidays.

Decide’s team says that the best time to buy cam­eras, tele­vi­sions, vac­cums, hot toys, and espres­so machines is before Black Fri­day. (So, days like today). The week before Christ­mas is the best time to buy many kitchen appli­ances and lap­tops. That said, Black Fri­day is a good time to buy home fit­ness equip­ment and video games.

But those two cat­e­gories are the only exceptions.

Retail­ers love that many peo­ple are obsessed with the idea of get­ting great deals on Black Fri­day by camp­ing out ear­ly or get­ting in the door first, and have done every­thing they can to encour­age peo­ple to make shop­ping their religion.

Peo­ple like this Flori­da woman:

Itzai­da Diaz plans to spend more than $1,500 at Best Buy on Black Fri­day, and she’s will­ing to camp out in front of the store for near­ly a week to make sure she gets the best deals.

“We’re real­ly doing it for my son who land­ed sec­ond in line last year. He has a very com­pet­i­tive spir­it,” said Diaz of east Orange Coun­ty, who set up two tents out­side the East Colo­nial Dri­ve elec­tron­ics retail­er Sat­ur­day night. “He wants a Toshi­ba 40-inch flat-screen TV, and we’re also get­ting tablets, Sony PlaySta­tions, Blu-ray play­ers and oth­er things.”

Since Diaz and her fam­i­ly are first in line, they’ll receive tick­ets to Best Buy’s lim­it­ed-quan­ti­ty door­buster deals when the store opens Thurs­day at midnight.

“I know this is crazy, but we’re actu­al­ly spend­ing qual­i­ty time togeth­er, and we can save up to $200 at the same time,” said Diaz, who is tak­ing off time from work as an accountant.

Here’s an idea, Itzai­da: Why don’t you pack up the tent, go home, pre­pare a hearty meal for Thanks­giv­ing, enjoy that meal, and play a board game with your son and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers? Then, if you feel like shop­ping lat­er on, pow­er up your com­put­er and browse for prices on elec­tron­ics online. Do some research (use Decide.com). Make a pur­chase or two if you’re con­vinced you’ve spot­ted a good deal. But don’t blow that much mon­ey on one day at one store in the wee hours of the morn­ing. Don’t spend your hol­i­day in front of a big box store.

Retail­ers have every incen­tive to make us all believe that our hol­i­day week­end is best spent at the mall, in their stores, load­ing up our cred­it cards with debt and buy­ing as much stuff as pos­si­ble. The impli­ca­tion is that buy­ing stuff will make us hap­py. But the hol­i­day we’re cel­e­brat­ing this week is Thanks­giv­ing — not Black Fri­day. And Thanks­giv­ing is an occa­sion to be con­tent, not greedy.

Too many peo­ple seem to have lost sight of what Thanks­giv­ing is all about, not least the exec­u­tives of Wal-Mart and Tar­get. I’m hap­py to say I don’t patron­ize those chains. I pre­fer to shop local, to shop union, and to shop organ­ic when­ev­er I pos­si­bly can. (That’s why PCC Nat­ur­al Mar­kets — which will be closed for the entire dura­tion of Thanks­giv­ing — is my favorite place to spend money).

We at NPI believe Thanks­giv­ing is, or should be, pri­mar­i­ly about three things: giv­ing thanks, spend­ing time with fam­i­ly, and con­tem­plat­ing the improve­ment of the human con­di­tion. There are many peo­ple on this Earth who sim­ply do not enjoy the free­doms or crea­ture com­forts that we Amer­i­cans have, and Thanks­giv­ing is as good an occa­sion as any to remem­ber that there are mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing with­out shel­ter, clean water, or ade­quate food.

This Thanks­giv­ing week­end, if you’re for­tu­nate not to have to work, con­sid­er donat­ing to a char­i­ty like Mer­cy­Corps and relax­ing at home instead of fight­ing the Black Fri­day crowds at Belle­vue Square, South­cen­ter, or Alder­wood Mall. You’ll save mon­ey, and you’ll have the chance to make the most of your time off, too.