(Note to readers: This piece was originally supposed to be in the Shawano Leader, the newspaper I work for, but the leadership there put the kibosh on it. That’s not going to stop me from airing it here, though, as my blog is mine.)

The holiday season is upon us, which means neverending Christmas music on the radio, constant checking on whether presents have been bought and people arguing over whether “Merry Christmas” is being pushed out as the phrase of choice when wishing someone well as they’re leaving.

In other news, Thanksgiving is next week.

It’s easy to understand if this is something of a shock to some readers out there. After all, Christmas decorations were going up in stores before Halloween had even arrived, and once the spookiest day of the year hit midnight to become Nov. 1, that’s when all of the holiday shopping specials went out.

Once upon a time, businesses shut down for Thanksgiving. If you were lucky, grocery stores would be open for a few hours in the morning for those families who realized they don’t have enough potatoes or forgot the cranberries or discovered there was no butter in the fridge for the rolls. Once everyone settled down for a long winter’s nap, they would get up the next day and usher in the Christmas season with shopping sprees to fill their lists.

Then the lines blurred between Thanksgiving and Christmas about a decade ago as many stores decided Friday was no longer hip enough to be the day when the best deals of the year could be had on toys, tools, clothing and other assorted gift items. Many determined that at 9 p.m. Thursday was when you could snag the best deals. Over the years, that time crept up to 7 p.m., 6 p.m., all the way back to 4 p.m. for a couple of stores.

In Wisconsin, we have the added whammy of the holiday being nestled right into the middle of deer hunting season, so some dinner tables are surrounded by blaze orange. Between the Bambi purge, televised football games and the pre-Black Friday deals, it’s a wonder that Thanksgiving dinners happen at all any more.

While the pre-Black Friday sales mean bargain busters have to decide whether to cut dinner short to run to Walmart, Target or their other favorite stores to get a 70-inch television set for pennies on the dollar, it also means the poor souls who work in their stores have their holiday forcibly cut short because they had to report for work before the turkey was even out of the oven, risking getting trampled when the doors open and the mob rolls in.

Fortunately, it seems the tide is turning on whether stores will be open on Thanksgiving or not. It seems like this year, stores have gone out of their way to say that, instead of depriving their employees of one day when they could be with their families and count their blessings without having to worry about punching a time clock, they’re going to show they care more about people than profit.

ABC has an online list of the major retailers that are removing the “pre” from their Black Friday sales plans. Clothing stores like T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom’s and Burlington Coat Factory are closing their doors. So are Barnes and Noble, Menards and Staples. For the folks wanting to carry on the tradition of getting last-minute food items Thanksgiving morning, they’ll have to go somewhere other than Aldi, which is also closing for the holiday.

The reversal of the pre-Black Friday trend is encouraging, but it’s far from being back to the “good old days.” Many of the big box stores like Target and Walmart will still be eagerly awaiting shoppers on Thanksgiving, manned by crews that would rather be snoozing in their living rooms after eating too much turkey. We still have a long way to go.

One would think the big box stores would want to hop on the goodwill train — after all, that’s better publicity than they could get from mailers and television advertising. A recent survey of 1,000 people done on Google Surveys by bestblackfriday.com shows that 72% of those surveyed prefer retail stores remain closed, and of the 28% who think they should be open, only half planned to shop on Thanksgiving.

Before anyone thinks I don’t know what I’m talking about in this rant on Christmas shopping on Thanksgiving, I did try it once, but I won’t use the cliche line that I didn’t inhale. My sister and brother-in-law convinced me, my boyfriend and my mother to be Santa’s little helpers to shop for my two nieces, so we descended on Antigo’s Walmart one Thanksgiving night. Mostly, I remember trying to weave around pushy people, only to end up in the clothing section, watching people swerve around each other in the aisles and thinking that shopping is hell.

Call me old-fashioned, but I enjoy spending holidays with the family, coming together for a meal and conversing about what’s been going on during the time we’ve been apart. Sure, there have been some family arguments, but no family is safe from occasional conflict. The point is that Thanksgiving is one of the few days of the year when you could spend time with those you love with no expectations and no demands.

I miss those days. I want those days back.

There are three states with “blue” laws that forbid retail stores from being open on Thanksgiving — Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Folks can shop online to their heart’s content, but storefronts are still locked up until Friday. I’m not sure we’re to the point where we need such laws, and it’s heartwarming to see that businesses like Menards and Barnes and Noble are policing themselves and remembering that money isn’t everything during the holiday season.

I’d say, in the so-called war on Christmas, Thanksgiving is winning.