For more than 15 years, Viola Gay has shopped on Black Friday around Jackson County, checking out sales at Walmart, Goody’s and J.C. Penney.

This year was no different.

Around 8 a.m., the 77-year-old Crothersville resident was leaving Walmart with a package of bed sheets.

“I never miss it,” Gay said with a smile.

But for her and many others around the country, Black Friday has slowly seeped into Thanksgiving Day as stores opened their doors earlier to stay competitive with each other.

In Seymour, Goody’s opened at 4 p.m. Thursday, and J.C. Penney opened an hour later.

Since last year, Gay said she now shops on both days and noticed Thanksgiving evening is busier than Black Friday morning.

“It was awful,” she said. “You couldn’t get through no place. It took about 30 minutes to get through a line.”

Despite the packed stores, she left with a few good deals. She bought a purple sweater for $8 and wore it while shopping Friday morning.

Some shoppers, like Kristy Myers of Seymour, prefer the old way of shopping — getting up at the crack of dawn the day after Thanksgiving to find the deals.

That’s what she was doing at 7:30 a.m. Friday, browsing Goody’s with her boyfriend.

The mother of five has found that it’s almost an advantage to wait until Thanksgiving is over because the crowd dwindles while most of the deals remain.

“People get it out of the way Thursday now, and that way on Friday, it’s not as crowded usually,” Myers said.

Not to mention, she said, it’s not worth it to try and make her way through large crowds, especially since she had a sprained ankle.

“It’s not worth fighting for,” Myers said.

For store employees, there are moments that can be stressful as they try to make everyone happy, but it also can be fun, according to the assistant manager at Goody’s.

“It can be as fun as you make it,” Danaille Rice said.

She said customers around this time particularly come into Goody’s for deals on boots and jackets, preparing for the winter season.

Rice said Friday morning’s crowd wasn’t anything in comparison to Thursday evening when a crowd swarmed at the doors, waiting to snag some low-priced deals.

“There was a big rush when we came in,” Rice said.

Tina Gills, store leader at J.C. Penney, said that store’s Black Friday events went “fabulous.”

She said the store was “jam-packed” Thursday evening, and people continued to file in Friday to purchase lower-priced items, including appliances, jewelry and clothes.

Last year, the store opened at 8 p.m. Thanksgiving Day. But this year, it allowed customers to shop at 5 p.m. to keep up with the competition, Gills said.

“We had coupons we gave away that night, and those were gone in five minutes,” she said.

Even with such a large group of shoppers coming in at one time, Gills said, they were all pleasant to each other while waiting in lines — probably because they didn’t have to wake up early and their bellies were full from eating on Thanksgiving.

“We had no problems,” she said.

To keep her employees motivated, Gills said, she tries to keep lots and lots of snacks on hand, including hot dogs, ice cream and candy.

This was her 37th holiday with J.C. Penney, and she said food and fun are the way to get through.

“That’s what you have to do to work in retail,”

Gills said.