Thanksgiving is dead. Or at least, it will be if the greedy fat cats who have marked it for death have their way.

Those greedy fat cats include the multibillionaire Walton family, the owners of Walmart, which has announced that it will begin its Black Friday sales at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. The Waltons, apparently upset with only being worth around $100 billion, are apparently quite okay with forcing their workers to come to work on Thanksgiving to satisfy their greed.

The root cause is the same with every single retailer that has decided to stay open on Thanksgiving – greed. The Waltons and the people like the Waltons who want to drag people away from one of the few days off most of us get are disgusting, awful, greedy people who want to make another dime at your expense and at the expense of their workers this holiday season.

They don’t deserve your dollars. Don’t they get enough of them every other day of the year? I don’t know about you, but if I were sitting on $100 billion, I think I’d have enough money that I could stand giving my employees a day off.

I think I could have a heart and act like a human being in that instance, rather than act like an inhuman, money-grubbing parasite, which is what the Waltons and their ilk are. But then again, I’m not one of the few graced with billions of dollars and literally nothing good to do with them.

Once upon a time, we had businessmen in this country who thought that treating your employees well was good business sense.

By the look of it, those today are few and far between – but if you are a businessman or a businesswoman, I implore you to shut your doors on Thanksgiving. You are stealing from your workers if you open on Thanksgiving – stealing precious family time that can never be replaced by a paycheck.

If you are not an employer but an employee working Thanksgiving, I encourage you to take action yourselves. Walmart workers all over the country will be walking out on strike on Black Friday; there’s no reason why the festivities shouldn’t start a bit earlier!

If enough workers walk off the job and enough shoppers support ‘em, you can be sure the Waltons won’t try something as boneheaded as a Thanksgiving dinner sale next year.

As for you readers who are not low-wage workers forced by your boss to punch a clock on Thanksgiving day or an employer, I encourage you not to shop on Thanksgiving.

Do not reward bad behavior on the part of these greed-driven opportunists. Better yet, if you know a business that plans on opening its doors Thanksgiving Day, stop shopping there altogether – a message needs to be sent to these folks, loud and clear.

Thanksgiving will die if you don’t do something about it. Last year it was 8 p.m. sales, this year it’s 6 p.m. – what next? Sales at 4 p.m.? If we don’t do something about it, one of our nation’s most sacred holidays is going to be rubbed out by the one percent.

Devin Griggs is president of the Murray State College Democrats.

Column by Devin Griggs, Opinion Editor