Next week, as soon as our pumpkin pie dishes
have been cleared away from our Thanksgiving dinner table, our thoughts will
inevitably turn to the holiday season ahead. Specifically, it will be time to
start thinking about how to get the best holiday gifts for our loved ones
without spending a fortune. Enter Black Friday- a truly American holiday with
roots going back as far as the 1950s, the day after Thanksgiving is famous for
being the biggest shopping day of the year! Stores slash prices with reckless
abandon, each trying to outdo one another for the best deals in town. Eager
consumers line up as soon as their Thanksgiving dinner is finished and wait in
line overnight for the chance to score a big-ticket electronic item or hot toy
of the year at a deep discount. In recent years, Black Friday has actually
started on Thursday, as more and more retailers open their stores to the public
on Thanksgiving night to begin the annual buying frenzy. But where did Black
Friday come from? Here’s a little history behind modern capitalism’s favorite
holiday, so you can impress your friends while you’re waiting in line at 4 AM
for a 4K TV at 50 percent off!
Why is it called Black Friday?
You’d think a holiday where shoppers can save
untold amounts of money on holiday gifts for their friends and families would
have a slightly less morbid-sounding name. After all, “Black Friday” sounds so
ominous, like something one would equate with a stock market crash or a dark
day in history. Actually, the origin of the name “Black Friday” includes both
of those things! The term “Black Friday” was originally used way back in
the 1800s, and did not have anything to do with holiday shopping at all- in
fact, the original Black Friday, September 24, 1869, was the day the U.S. gold
market crashed, sending the country into financial crisis.
In the 1950s, the term was used to describe the
day after Thanksgiving by police officers in Philadelphia, when the annual
Army-Navy football game held the Saturday after Thanksgiving would result in a
flood of tourists and shoppers to the city. The police would have to work all
day, taking no time off, in order to deal with the bedlam and chaos that
ensued. By 1961, the Black Friday name had caught on in Philadelphia, with
retailers cashing in on the phenomenon by marking down their merchandise
considerably for one-day doorbuster sales. Though marketers tried
unsuccessfully to change the name to “Big Friday,” so as to make it sound more
consumer-friendly and upbeat, the name Black Friday had stuck, and everyone in
Philadelphia more or less treated it as a city holiday to kick off the
Christmas season.
Black Friday as a concept didn’t spread to the
rest of the country until about 1985, which is when retailers came up with the
“official” origin of the term- since the day after Thanksgiving is one of the
biggest shopping days of the year, it is a chance for stores to get “out of the
red and into the black,” meaning that they can turn a profit even if sales have
been slow for the year. Since the re-branding of Black Friday took place in the
80s, a decade known for its rampant consumerism, shoppers took to the new spin
on the old holiday and used it as an excuse to boost the economy while enjoying
tremendous savings. (In reality, the Saturday before Christmas is officially
the biggest day of the year for retail sales, but it doesn’t have quite the
notoriety that Black Friday does, thanks to the magic of marketing.)
Black Friday has gone on to spawn several other
“shopping holidays” based on its popularity, including “Cyber Monday” (the
Monday following Thanksgiving where online marketplaces slash their prices for
unbelievable deals) as well as “Small Business Saturday/Sunday” (the weekend after
Thanksgiving dedicated to supporting local businesses). Like it or not, Black
Friday is truly an American tradition, and will be part of our holiday rituals
for years to come.
In the market for incredible Black Friday deals
on all your favorite brands of appliances? Want to give yourself the gift of a
good night’s sleep every night with a great new mattress? Check out the Black
Friday savings at Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom!
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