Though the final numbers aren't in yet, the National Restaurant Association expects that the number of Americans who either dined out or picked up prepared dinners this Thanksgiving is likely to top 2011's total of 30 million. Norman Rockwell images of families gathered 'round bountiful holiday tables notwithstanding, those National Restaurant Association statistics reflect the realities of 21st century...
Though the final numbers aren't in yet, the National Restaurant Association expects that the number of Americans who either dined out or picked up prepared dinners this Thanksgiving is likely to top 2011's total of 30 million.
Norman Rockwell images of families gathered 'round bountiful holiday tables notwithstanding, those National Restaurant Association statistics reflect the realities of 21st century life. Americans today are busier than ever, with everyone working more and having less time available for domestic duties like planning and preparing big holiday meals.
Restaurant dining is no longer a special-occasion luxury. Instead it's become a necessary component of day-to-day existence.
It's no surprise, then, that going out to dinner for family-focused celebrations like Thanksgiving, a practice almost unheard of in the 1950s and 1960s, is now commonplace.
One major holiday, Christmas, remains the last holdout, however.
Locally, nearly all restaurants, with the exception of a number of Oriental places, some hotel properties, and a very few independent eateries, will remain shuttered on December 25.
But for how many more years will that continue to be the case?
The demand is already there; those establishments that do open for Christmas dinner are often booked solid, weeks in advance.
Restaurant owners, managers, and workers remain understandably reluctant to giving up the last major holiday they can enjoy with family and friends, but now that big retail is opening up for Black Friday sales before the Thanksgiving dishes are even in the dishwasher, how long can employee resistance withstand the pressure to cash in on potential holiday business?
It will probably all start when a few major restaurant chains, eager to boost their quarterly same-store "comps," announce they'll be open on Christmas Day. Competitors will inevitably match those hours, especially if Christmas Day openings turn out to be particularly lucrative.
Independents will then face the choice of yielding still more business to the chains or also joining in on the December 25 action.
Then it won't have been the Grinch that's stolen Christmas from restaurant workers, but rather the commercial and lifestyle pressures of today's world.