Over the years, holiday shopping has become more intimidating and pressured. Shopping for Christmas presents or trying to get the best deal on Black Friday has led to stores being open later on holidays and bigger rushes.

Stores used to stay closed on Thanksgiving, allowing workers and customers to have time off during the holidays to celebrate or rest. Only one day after many families are telling everyone about how thankful they are, they are in stores fighting over the best deals. Also, just because a store has a product advertised, does not mean that the product will be in store when it finally opens.

Now many stores begin sales as early as 5 p.m. Thursday evening. This change means instead of spending time at home, employees will have to come in early and deal with the rush of customers. For example, Toys-R-Us opened up at 5 p.m. and Target opened up at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.

Shoppers will have to deal with large crowds, and in the past violence has been known to break out over fighting over items and goods. It can also be very easy for customers to overspend. If everything is at a discounted price, people will want to buy more and more of it. It would be easy to fall into the trap of sales.

Some may say that these early holiday sales are beneficial to both customers and employees, who will not have to work on the holidays. The stores offer giveaways and price reductions, but in reality these discounts only last for a limited amount of time. They may also say that holiday has become easier over the years due to the use of online shopping.

Online shopping can become a solution to fighting big crowds during the holidays. It would save workers in stores from having to work long and grueling hours on these days. With online shopping, customers can get the same deals and reductions on popular items. Days such as Cyber Monday offer these same sales and maybe even more than what is offered in stores. This reduces crowd size and can be done from the comfort of someone’s home or even on a mobile device.