Shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday? What's Your Take?

All across America, Black Friday shopping is moving up, and up, and up—much like the appearance of Santa Claus at the Deptford Mall, which occurred more than three weeks earlier.

With a record number of retailers pushing their hours of operation from early-morning "doorbusters" on Friday into Thursday evening sales, shoppers are invited to open their wallets just hours after they clear their dinner plates.

What's behind this retail crunch?

An analysis provided by the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania blames a handful of factors, including the pressure of competition (i.e., once one retailer opens, others feel compelled to follow), the lateness of the holiday during this calendar year (leaving only 26 shopping days between Black Friday and Christmas Eve), and the increasing conversion of sales from brick-and-mortar to online stores.

Then there's the gamble that customers might be turned off by the idea of shopping on a family-oriented holiday, the Wharton article notes:

"Users of the website Change.org have created nearly 60 different petitions that have collected almost 200,000 signatures in total, asking specific stores to “Save Thanksgiving.”

"The petition against Target (which is opening at 8 p.m., an hour earlier than last year) alone has collected more than 95,000 signatures. And Walmart’s 6 p.m. opening is only adding fuel to the fire of employees who plan to protest on Black Friday to bring to light complaints about low wages and recent unjustified firings."

The same degree of scrutiny that has been placed on big-box retailers whose employees are called into work on the holiday has also been used to the marketing advantage of the Small Business Saturday initiative.

Begun by American Express in 2010, the holiday has benefited from a wave of feel-good messaging that trades on the benefits of small businesses to local communities, such as the stability, job creation, and philanthropy they provide.

(Click here to read up on the retailers who will be offering special deals this holiday season.)

But even with $5.5 billion estimated to have been generated by Small Business Saturday in 2012, it isn't the end to the shopping spree of the post-Thanksgiving rush. That concludes with Cyber Monday, which is expected to see a 17 percent increase in sales this year.

Which should leave us with the question as to whether all that extra effort will truly translate into additional dollars. Last year, Patch reported on the push of Black Friday into Thanksgiving, including the observation that shopping earlier doesn't necessarily bring more dollars into the market—it might just bring them earlier.

"Black Friday might bring some spending into November that might have waited until December...but the total amount spent won’t change," said economist Louis D. Johnston of the Minneapolis Post last year.

What do you think, readers? Have you shopped on Thanksgiving before? Will you join the Black Friday or Small Business Saturday rushes? Are you staying electronic-exclusive Cyber Monday? Or are you keeping that money in your pocket this year?

Watch our video above and then weigh in in the comments below.