Many stores in Canada do their Boxing Day/Week sales online too. I imagine that the big stores in the States have online shopping for Black Friday too. So does it really matter what time the brick-and-mortar stores open?
In Canada these sales are moving online more and more every year. Stores only tend to have two or three of each of the "door crasher" items, so even if you wait overnight in line you're still fighting a rushing crowd when they open the doors, and you have to be one of the first to get to that particular item or you waited for nothing. I'm not willing to waste all that time on a chance and I hate fighting crowds.
The only things really worthwhile are electronics (IMO), and our electronics giants mirror all of their Boxing Day sales online. It typically goes live on the evening of the 25th and they allow you to preview the items and prices up to a day ahead of time so you can bookmark what you plan to buy. There are hundreds of everything in stock (shows the current stock right on each page) so you will always get the item you're looking for if you shop within the first few hours the sales go live. That evening I just take a break from the festivities for 10 minutes to hop on the websites, order something big like a TV plus a few smaller things, all for an amazing price. Free shipping on all orders over $40 and it's really quick – I usually have the item(s) by the 28th, depending on when the weekend is.
Ordering Boxing Day sales online has been almost like a tradition for years now. I haven't had to step out into the cold nor wait in a line for Boxing Day/Week sales in almost five years now. And more and more people that I talk to are switching to online shopping for those deals. I think the old tradition of going to stores in person on Boxing Day is slowly going away.
Why wait in line in the cold or wade through a sea of people to look for something you want that's probably already sold out by the time you get to it? Maybe some people like that, but not me.
