Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Black Friday

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.

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Special thanks to history.com for research on this article.

Use Your Appliances to Keep Those New Year’s Resolutions

In addition to providing our homes with all the modern comfort we desire, appliances are also a great way to keep your resolutions in check this year. For example…

Want to lose weight AND save money? Organize the fridge.  According to a statistic reported in the Washington Post, American families discard between 14 and 25 percent of the food and drinks they buy. This is commonly due to the foods reaching and surpassing their expiration dates before consumption. A good way to make sure your healthy veggies, low-fat cheeses and lean meats are eaten before their use-by dates, clear out the clutter in the refrigerator (thus eliminating the fatty junk food and unhealthy processed foods) and make sure to use the perishable items in time by moving them to the front of the fridge.

Utilize the freezer. One of the biggest roadblocks for any New Year’s resolution is our tendency to slip back into our old routines for convenience’s sake. After all, who wants to cook a healthy gourmet meal on a Wednesday evening when you’re exhausted from work? Before you grab that take-out menu, consider the benefits of pre-making and freezing delicious, healthy meals. If all you have to do is thaw and heat a pre-prepared meal from the freezer, you will not only be able to eat healthier without sacrificing ease of preparation, but you will also save money on the pricey bills incurred by take-out, delivery and fast food.

Launder clothes effectively. Many of us have a New Year’s resolution to cut unnecessary spending and save more money. A great way to do that is to care for our clothing properly, which eliminates the need for expensive clothing replacement.  Using your washing machine and clothes dryer as the manufacturer intended, cleaning your dryer regularly to boost performance and cut dry time, using special steam features on some dryer models to cut down on pressing and cleaners’ bills and learning quick laundry hacks for maintaining your clothing’s original color and shape can keep your clothes looking new without breaking the bank.