Black Friday Used to Be Fun for Shoppers. What Happened?

For Max Frazier, shopping on Black Friday used to be one of his favorite annual traditions.

On Thanksgiving, Mr. Frazier and his wife would scan through newspaper ads looking for deals on toys that they wanted to buy their grandchildren. They were excited to wake up early and line up outside stores at 4:30 a.m., running through their shopping game plan as they waited.

One year, one of Mr. Frazier’s granddaughters announced that she wanted a giant teddy bear she had seen at Target. So after Mr. Frazier and his wife found a Black Friday deal for it, they made sure to be some of the first people in line before the store opened, headed straight to where they knew the bears would be and scooped one up.

“When we were checking out, people were like, ‘Where did you get that bear?’” Mr. Frazier, a 67-year-old retired teacher, recalled. “We had fun loading it in the car. It was like having a new passenger with us as we were heading home. And it was only 10 bucks.”

Those days are a thing of the past. Mr. Frazier said he had not shopped on Black Friday in at least five years. It no longer feels like an adventure. He and his wife now sleep in on Friday mornings.

“Shopping has really changed,” he said, pointing out that most sales today occur online. “I guess we are a little nostalgic for the fun we used to have on Black Friday because that doesn’t exist anymore.”

After The New York Times asked readers this week to share their thoughts about shopping on Black Friday, more than 75 wrote in, with a vast majority saying they were not planning to shop on the day. Many lamented that it no longer felt like a unique shopping event and that sales often continued into the new year. Others suggested supporting small businesses rather than big-box retailers, whether they offered sales or not, or avoiding shopping altogether by participating in “Buy Nothing Day.”