Amazon's early Black Friday bounty the pilgrims' pride

Black Friday is coming more than three weeks early to Amazon this year.

The world's most ginormous online retailer got a head start today on hijacking our national--and my family's personal--heritage. I'm a direct descendant of those poor souls who 400 years ago stepped off the Mayflower, which was definitely not smelling like flowers anymore after a long trans-Atlantic journey, and said, "This has got to be better than England--we'll take it."

So I guess it's in the same spirit that Amazon today offers a bamboo cutting board at 40 percent off--in the hopes that an exhausted and desperate population will say, "That's gotta be better than what we'd normally pay at Crate and Barrel in early November--we'll take it."

But in this rough economy, do we really need an extra 23 days of bargains? Judging by how quickly Amazon sold out of its first "early Black Friday deal" today--this Bluetooth speaker set at half off was gone in a few hours--it looks like the answer isn't so much a "yes" as a "hell yea!"

I suppose I should also be thankful that Amazon is giving us so many more bargain-hunting opportunities, right? Isn't that the meme for this particular season? But thankfulness doesn't have to be expressed through gluttony, and great bounty often comes at great cost. One price my ancestors paid for scoring some sweet new real estate were the wicked Nor'Easters unlike anything they'd experienced at home. So consider taking the pilgrims' lesson--don't go too crazy with Black Friday bargains and end up adding to the foreclosure crisis.

Unless you can find a way to justify all the new loot, that is. After all, what's more deserving of our thanks than our beloved family and friends--who will totally love the meal you prepared on that new bamboo cutting board.