What is "Black Friday"?

What is "Black Friday"?

After Halloween comes Thanksgiving and with Thanksgiving comes the day after. Black Friday. Sounds ominous but if you are a shopper, it is the Holy Grail of all shopping days. It marks the first day of “THE” shopping season and other than Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, is probably the single most noted day of the holiday season.

There isn't a retail store or wholesale outlet that doesn't use Black Friday to boost their sales. Some of the larger retailers have experienced stampedes for those one day only specials. With one sale after another, store to store, it is a hectic paced day for many shoppers. Sadly, fights ensue and even more sad is that death has even been a result.

It is mainly an American founded day and shoppers eagerly await the sale ads to come out with the sales that will come the Friday after Thanksgiving. While they eat their pumpkin pie and drink their pumpkin flavored latte, they plan out which stores they will be at 5am the next morning. Some even plan overnight camping to get “that deal” of limited stock of unheard of low priced, much wanted item.

As we scour the ads in print or online, do we even know and when and where the notorious name of Black Friday came from? For centuries, “Black Friday" was always associated with accounting. In the days before computers, company records were done by hand. The accountant would use red ink to indicate a loss, thus “in the red” and black ink as a profit, thus "in the black".

In regards to the holiday shopping reference, it is believed to have came about in 1966. The Philadelphia Police Department experienced a day of massive traffic and sidewalks over flowing with shoppers, thus deemed the day to be the start of the Holiday shopping season. It is said that it was 2002 before “Black Friday” became a popular term.