Isn’t it great that we get two holidays in a row? I’m not talking about Thanksgiving followed by Christmas; I mean that other great celebration that falls in between – the after-Thanksgiving Day sale.

I have to admit – as much as I love my family, I’m not really sorry I had to work this year. While my wife, daughter and in-laws were making their way between stores while snow fell on their noses and eyelashes, I sat in a warm office and looked out the window as I walked from my desk to the desktop printer spitting out our Friday newspaper proof pages.

Wasn’t the wind wicked at times? No wonder Clay County folks were involved in so many fender-benders Friday evening. Indianapolis TV stations reported a fatality when a car slid off the road and hit a tree.

I called the Clay County Sheriff’s Department around 11:30 p.m. Rick Swearingen answered and told me there were multiple wrecks on the Carbon overpass and on a bridge at Clay City. None was life threatening, but the weather was definitely bad late Friday night.

Anyway, I participated in the Friday-after-Thanksgiving shopping madness years ago.

At that time, we lived in Elkhart, Ind. We would visit the in-laws over Thanksgiving and then do a Christmas shopping spree in Indianapolis. Part of our Thanksgiving tradition is for the women to make notes, conferring on the all-important issue, “What does everyone want for Christmas?”

Then, we would get up fairly early on Friday, still bogged down with turkey, and head east for a day of shopping.

The shopping experience is unique on that Friday after Thanksgiving. Not only do retailers deeply discount prices, but they used to bring out the big guns – local entertainment – to make sure everyone makes the pilgrimage to the big shopping Mecca.

One year, Cowboy Bob passed out autographed pictures. He took time to visit with our son. (Cowboy Bob, for those who don’t know, was one of The Big Children’s TV Personalities on WTTV, Channel 4, before it became The WB station in Indiana).

That same day, a lady came out of Lazarus (a store my wife and I thought we could not afford to shop in those days) and handed our daughter a HUGE Lazzie dog stuffed animal. Amanda was still in a stroller and that toy was as big as she was. She still has it.

The woman was a total stranger. I guess Christmas shopping makes people generally more tolerant than they would be at other times during the year.

That shopping day lasted until late afternoon. We met the rest of the family for lunch that day and made plans to go to Pizza Hut that night.

At some point on that holiday, I picked up a bug and the pizza supper didn’t set well on my stomach. On the plus side, something about our order wasn’t right, so the store manager didn’t charge my father-in-law.

There is something else that makes this ‘tween holiday different. For many years, we would shop in Indianapolis the day after Thanksgiving and then hide our gifts from the in-laws, take them home (to rural Edinburgh, Ind., or Elkhart or rural Madisonville, Ky., depending where we lived at the time). In the next three weeks, we would wrap gifts, hide them from the children and, on Christmas Eve, load all the loot in the car and make the trip back to the in-laws house in Crawfordsville. The day after Christmas, we would load all the loot they gave us into the car and make the long trip home.

Yes, it was a lot of fun. But, watching the crowds rush into the stores, hearing the TV reporter talk about her frozen feet and seeing the snow blowing outside our office window while I was snug and warm inside – that was pretty nice, too.

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving and here’s a wish for a very Merry Christmas.