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Twenty countries and counting around the globe celebrate the holiday that is a shopaholic’s dream come true. Black Friday is known as the first day of the traditional Christmas shopping season, the Friday after Thanksgiving where nearly all stores have their best sale of the year. In the most recent years, Black Friday has been starting the evening of Thanksgiving, as opposed to the early hours of the following day. According to The Washington Post, Millennials aged 24-35 are the biggest spenders when it comes to Black Friday, with an average expenditure of $419.52 per person.

If retail stores are not your thing, an alternative option is the following Monday, known as Cyber Monday, where online retailers promote bargain deals without having the hassle of leaving your own home, waiting in long lines and disrupting your time with family. In 2018, Adobe Analytics estimated that Cyber Monday would hit new highs by bringing in over $7.9 billion in sales online that day alone, an increase of 19.3% from the previous year.

Yet these practices are in many ways contradictory to the intent of Thanksgiving as outlined by the holiday’s creators. It is believed that the holiday that’s all about the food, was started in 1621. Thanksgiving is known as an annual national holiday in the United States and Canada that is a celebration of the harvest and other blessings of the past year. It is a day that is traditionally celebrated with family and those who you love most.

It seems like Black Friday is cutting into this family time, which is interfering with what Thanksgiving is all about. This causes families who celebrate both to force their feasts earlier in the day. Many retailers have elected to open Thursday afternoon to accommodate people who don’t want to wake up and go shopping in the middle of the night. This seems to take away the family aspect of Thanksgiving as families spend less time together and more time running around shopping for the best deals.

This has led many to question if Black Friday is coming at the expense of an important American tradition.

“Typically my family will eat around 2 or 3 p.m. and get ready to go shopping right after, so I would say my grandparents start cooking dinner fairly early in the morning in order to get ready to shop,” said, Dalton Dencklau, an annual black Friday shopper.

But at least those who shop on Black Friday are doing it by choice. There’s a whole other group — retail employees — who are forced to cut off Thanksgiving celebrations early just to work.  Many people around the globe absolutely dread this time of the year. Not only is it a holiday season, but from Thanksgiving to New Years, shopping malls and retailers are going to be the busiest they have ever been all year. This means companies are going to want all hands on deck and will need all employees working all night and the following day. The worst part is the employees will more than likely be busy for hours on end as they deal with upset customers, long lines and lots of fighting and yelling.

“ I had to work the night of thanksgiving,” said Brittany Anderson, a former Younkers employee. “I had to leave my grandparents house early and eat before everyone else in order to get to work by 7 on Thanksgiving Day and work until 1 o’clock in the morning. By that time, everyone had gone home and went to bed or were Black Friday shopping, so I was forced to go home and do the same. Honestly, It made me feel left out family activities.”

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Either you take advantage of Black Friday sales, you totally avoid it, or you completely strike out and have to work the gruesome hours of it. Thanksgiving has officially become the annual holiday that brings out the best and worst of people.