The Billion-Dollar Holiday

When Americans started celebrating Thanksgiving in the 19th century, it was about cherishing the blessings of the year, particularly the year’s harvest. Nowadays, as people aren’t as dependent on agriculture as they once were, it is more about a general thankfulness for the things and more importantly the people we have in our lives. However, sometimes it seems like the holiday is as much about thinking what we don’t have as it is about valuing what we’ve got.
Over the past few years, Thanksgiving weekend has grown to become a huge shopping extravaganza both on- and offline. Retailers try to outdo each other in offering the best Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals and consumers willingly grab the chance to kick off their holiday shopping and snap up some bargains.

In 2014, e-commerce sales on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday each surpassed the billion-dollar mark with Cyber Monday breaking the record for the single biggest online shopping day in U.S. history. Let’s see what record this year has in store. Whatever it is, retailers will probably have billions of reasons to be thankful.