Send a Message on 'Black Midnight': Stay Home

Now that big retailers are opening on the night of Thankgsiving to extend the Black Friday shopping madness, Michelle Singletary has a request: "People, please stay home," she writes in the Washington Post. Black Friday is crazy enough as is, and opening the doors even earlier is yet another sign of "our financially unhealthy obsession with shopping." She takes special exception to Walmart's explanation that it wants to help families have a great Christmas with these sales.

"See, that’s just it," writes Singletary. "What on Earth do any of us need to buy on the special day (and night) we as a nation have purposefully set aside for family time?" The money columnist also can't resist a little lecture for penny-pinching consumers. "You never save when you spend," she writes, no matter how great a bargain the store says you're getting. "Saving is an act signified by the absence of spending." Click to read about a Target employee who has started an online petition against the earlier hours. (More Black Friday stories.)