EDIT: What American holiday values?

In elementary school, American students learned about the bountiful feast shared between Native Americans and pilgrims to symbolize their new friendship and partnership to build the United States we know today. When we got older, we started to learn about the genocide and destruction of Native American cultures brought on by European imperialist ventures all the way from the coastlines of Massachusetts to California.

Now, the holiday is about just how much money you can brag about saving at Macy’s and Best Buy.

Despite the tradition of spending time with loved ones, 33 million Americans left holiday festivities to swipe their credit cards, according to USA Today on Friday. That means thousands of people had to withdraw from their holiday plans to open up stores for these swarms of overzealous shoppers.

Now for Cyber Monday: a time to sift through every website you have ever bought from to look for even more things to satisfy your inner bargain hunter. Maybe Boston University’s WiFi will stay running, but there is a definite chance sale-hungry college students could crash BU 802.1x. Cyber Monday sales add even more to the economy, spreading money through more retailers and shipping companies. Sounds like this weekend is a great stimulus package for the U.S domestic economy.

While people throughout the country plug in to scour Cyber Monday sales, the ripples of Black Friday interrupting Thanksgiving dinner lingers in our Starbucks mugs. Macy’s, Target and Sears opened up Thursday evening. K-Mart ambitiously opened their doors at 6 a.m.Thanksgiving day, and planned to stay open for more than 40 consecutive hours, according to CNN Money Saturday.

What comes with stores opening earlier? Yes, we get the opportunity to snag that Panasonic LCD TV for $300, but then we have to buy it from a salesperson who has been standing in crowds for hours. Most employees received time-and-a-half, but not all were more eager to make more money over the reward of spending time with family and friends. From the CVS open all day on Thanksgiving to the Urban Outfitters, people were required to work to maintain shelves and ring up hundreds of customers so corporate America could stimulate the economy.

Starting Thursday, more than 141 million Americans shopped throughout the weekend and are expected to continue snagging holiday deals through Tuesday morning. As of Sunday, the Christian Science Monitor reports shoppers spent more than $57 billion through BlackFriday bargains and Small Business Saturday sales. Americans are expected to continue heavy shopping in bulk through Tuesday.

There is one advantage to extending Black Friday sales from Thursday night through Monday. By extending time for people to shop, less people end up actually fighting in stores. Throughout the thousands of stores in the U.S. open on Black Friday, one person tragically died, and that is because she fell asleep at the wheel, according to BuzzFeed.

But when the rest of the turkey is in the fridge and the rest of the family has passed out, isn’t running to stores with your friends atmidnight an exhilarating experience? Together you will forego crowds of hundreds of crazed people ready to purchase every pair of $5 trousers. If you go in with your friends, not only have you seen you family and spent time with them for the holiday, you can see the rest of your loved ones.

But in the end, the workers get paid general time-and-a-half on the worst shopping day of the year so that people can buy computers for $20. Putting aside the terrible imperialism that inspired Thanksgiving, the day is certainly not about spending hundreds of dollars to save hundreds of dollars. It’s funny how the one day we traditionally say thanks for what we have we are already thinking of how to get more things. Apparently what we are thankful for, by the end of the week, is nowhere near enough.