I am not a Black Friday kind of person. Nor do I see myself partaking of any of the increasingly popular shopping opportunities on Thanksgiving Day ? which I am christening Bloated Thursday, as much as for the swelling of the lines at the mall as for the gas and indigestion I imagine one experiences during a sale-crazed shopping spree immediately following a meal big enough to feed a small African village.
“For families with healthy emotional connections and constructive, mature communication, any opportunity to engage in a joint activity such as shopping will generally be experienced as pleasurable, even when stressful,” said Darald Hanusa, a senior lecturer in social work at UW-Madison. But he emphasized it’s not the shopping that makes for happy families; it’s the happy families that make for pleasant shopping.