Photo Courtesy of the New York Times.

Turns out the crazy hordes that flooded stores Friday did things besides trampling over teen girls and pepper spraying one another.

Somewhere in the midst of the shopper on shopper violence, some actual shopping occurred, netting a record $52.4 billion in sales over Thanksgiving weekend, a 16.4% jump from last year.

There are varying explanations for the jump in retail numbers, despite other signs of economic caution.

Margaret Taylor, vice president and senior credit officer in the corporate finance group at Moody’s Investors Service said,

“With consumers, it’s emotional, so they might feel they need Christmas this year. They could be willing to take on more credit.”

Analysts also warn that traffic to stores seemed to slow through the weekend, and that many more consumers were purchasing using credit cards, rather than with cash.

While it’s too soon to say whether this shopping (over)enthusiasm will last into the holiday season, as Bill Martin, founder of ShopperTrak notes,

“what we do know is without a strong start to the season it’s pretty hard to have a good season.”

From all of us at USDemocrazy we would like to wish you all a very happy day-after-Thanksgiving AKA Food Coma Friday.

True, most folks refer to this day as BLACK FRIDAY. But we think this sounds rather ominous following the decent and honorable Thanksgiving holiday.

Black Friday got this name because major retailers finally see their annual accounts move from the red (debt) into Black (profit) because of the onslaught of bargain-hunting shoppers barraging the Malls.

The result of these armies of crazed consumers can also result in an injury prone “Black and Blue” Friday.

Tell us if you have any “Black Friday” stories and experiences from this year’s madness.

Meanwhile, we will look forward to “Sleep-in Saturday.”

Today we offer a special Thanksgiving Cartoon of the day thanks to Seattle’s David Horsey. What do you think of Dave’s take on America’s favorite holiday?

Thanks, wikicommons

We here at USDemocrazy know a good turkey when we see one (and there is no bigger turkey than our in-house cartoonist/editor).

Unfortunately, we don’t know how to cook a big Turkey (bird, that is…). So in preparation for the office party on Thursday, we have turned to the Internet to help us out.

This week’s Awesome Sites focuses on timely recipes for tasty Thanksgiving treats and accessories.

If you are looking for a big selection of Holiday themed food,  AllRecipes.com is probably a good place to start.

The Huffington Post has gotten into the spirit of the occasion with ten Thanksgiving recipes.

For those of you who will be having Turkey these recipes from CBSNews may interest you.

Foodnetwork.com offers an array of recipes for Thanksgiving which don’t involve birds. Such recipes include stuffing or dressing and pumpkin pie.

Finally, After you tried all the recipes in the above websites on Thanksgiving, you may want to check out this site on Friday: Weight Watchers.com

Over the years, the tradition of Thanksgiving has changed greatly. It hasn’t always been about food, football and parade floats.

In this weeks Film Festival we have decided to showcase some interesting developments to this great holiday.

The first video comes from the Great Depression.  It was in that economic hard time President Franklin Delano Roosevelt decided to change the date of Thanksgiving. He moved it to its current Thursday before the last week in November so that merchants could have more time to make money before Christmas time.

However, some states did not recognize Roosevelt’s recommended change, or “Franksgiving” as it was called.

This video from 1950 brings us a lesson on proper Thanksgiving etiquette. Don’t put too much turkey in your mouth at once or put too much butter on your rolls!

This clip is something we’re all familiar with – the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which features a ton of fun floats and balloons that represent popular images in American culture.

In this clip in particular, the parade gets “Rick Rolled” when Rick Astley makes an appearance.

In a contemporary Thanksgiving explanation, President Obama addressed the nation last year to discuss the meaning of Thanksgiving and the progress our country has made in various realms.