Tomorrow people in north and middle North America, also known as Canada and the United States, will celebrate Thanksgiving.

While there are of course other areas of the world that celebrate a day of thanks over the course of the year the American and Canadian version are the most similar to each other and just so happen to occur on the same day.

I am sure we all remember the stories from grade school when we made construction paper hats and played pilgrim while learning about the first Thanksgiving feast which may or may not have had fish as the main course instead of what we have today.

This year is also the first time since 1888 that Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah both occur on the same day.

Thanksgiving and Hanukkah are both times to reflect on what we are thankful for and spend time together with friends and family.

Of course in recent years Thanksgiving seems to have become less about the time with family and more about the planning for Black Friday shopping.

While stores once waited until the predawn hours of Friday to start their sales, more and more stores are now opening on Thanksgiving day to allow shoppers to get an even earlier start on the holiday of commercialism.

When I was younger very few stores were open on Thanksgiving. There were of course the diners like Waffle House that never closed their doors and a smattering of gas stations and convenience stores to help travelers reach their destinations.

Aside from that you would be hard pressed to really find anything open on Thanksgiving that counted as a shopping experience.

During college I worked for Albertson