I’d wish all of you a Happy Black Friday, but most of you have been celebrating that particular shopping-based holiday for weeks now.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain about the Black Friday holiday, as our newspapers were stuffed to the brim with circulars and inserts advertising the high holy day of retail, but I’ve always been one to bite the hand that feeds me.

With each passing year, it seems Thanksgiving gets gobbled up in retailers’ desires to sell us things and the public’s desire to find a deal at any cost.

Thanksgiving used to be about coming together as a family and being thankful for what you have.

Now, it seems Thanksgiving is just an opportunity to gluttonously overeat so you’ll pass out early and be able to make the “Midnight Madness” sale at the store of your choice. Turkey isn’t a tasty seasonal treat, it’s a way to mainline tryptophan so you can get a few hours in before you try to gouge out other shoppers’ eyes with your elbows to keep them from getting that sweater you had your eye on.

For that matter, while all these sales seem great on the surface, are you really saving money?

You might be able to get a $350 television for $125, but if you weren’t planning on buying a television anyway, you didn’t really save $225, you just spent $125 on something you didn’t really need.

I enjoy a good bargain as much as the next person, but I’m not going to go out of my way or brave the madding crowds to try to get a deal on something I don’t actually need.

Of course, people like to blame the stores for being open earlier and earlier, but they only did that as a response to consumer demand.

They wouldn’t be open if people weren’t there to shop.

And this season, a number of retailers have created big ad campaigns around the fact they won’t be open on Thanksgiving to give their employees time with their families — an act that we’re supposed to applaud them for.

No, that really just seems to be basic human decency, and if we’d all stop going crazy for half-off merchandise we don’t really need, every retail employee could spend the holiday with their families.

I don’t want to seem anti-Christmas, but when what used to be a simple religious celebration turns into a gift-giving free-for-all, maybe it’s time we reexamine ourselves and figure out exactly what this holiday means to us.

Normally, I’d try to offer some sort of remedy for the problems I point out, but I don’t know how to fix this. No one does.

So, be safe out there, Black Friday shoppers. Don’t kill anybody.

Cliff McCollum is managing editor of Gulf Coast Media. He can be reached at cliff@gulfcoastmedia.com.