One of our favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. Compared to others, it’s straightforward: get together with family and friends, eat, and hang out. It’s easy to focus on what the day really means – being thankful for what we have.

This year, though, the dressing on many tables will still be warm when some retailers open their doors for Black Friday – on Thursday night. For large retailers, big deals and bigger crowds drive the biggest sales day of the year. Keeping their doors closed would be madness, and the reality is that opening their doors earlier and earlier is one of the few ways they can keep a leg up on competitors.

For small businesses, though, we wonder if slashing prices and opening the doors at 4am is the best strategy for the weekend. If we received something like this in an email the Monday before Thanksgiving, with a subject line “Why we’re not going to be open on Black Friday,” a small business would win our hearts and minds in an instant.

Good morning!

We hope you’re as excited for Thanksgiving as we are! Some of us have family coming to town, others are getting ready to hit the road, and some are making plans to spend the day with friends. Thanksgiving is a day to reflect, relax, and enjoy the company of those close to you.

And then comes Friday. The Friday after Thanksgiving can be incredibly stressful and even dangerous for shoppers. It’s always felt odd to us that we follow one of the most relaxing days of our year by the most frantic. So today, we’re letting you know that we won’t be open on Black Friday. We don’t want to force you to leave your house and shop with us to get one-day door-buster deals, and we don’t want our staff to leave their loved ones to come to work at midnight.

So, this year, we’re starting our own Black Friday tradition: our online store will be ready for you on Friday, as it always is, complete with some deals we’re really excited to share with you. Or, if you’d rather take the weekend off, we’ll be open on Monday with those same deals in our store all week, and to make it as easy for you as possible to stop by, we’ll be staying open an extra two hours on Monday and Tuesday next week.

 You don’t need to wait in line overnight, you don’t need to rush all over town, and you don’t need to feel obligated to shop on Friday. Thanksgiving is a special time of year – and we don’t want to interrupt it for your family, or for ours.

Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you Monday.

Who knows – if enough consumers responded, maybe the large retailers would follow suit. Or at least keep their doors closed until daybreak on Friday.

Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you Monday.