What is Black Friday?
As we all know, Black Friday is an unofficial holiday in the United States. It’s the Friday after Thanksgiving. Historically, this is the first shopping day of Christmas.
How did it start?
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, certain large department stores, especially Macy’s, began holding Thanksgiving Day parades on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It provides an ideal opportunity for shops to market their Christmas merchandise and is the opening of a very important period of the year: the Christmas shopping season.
But how did the day come to be called Black Friday, and how has it changed over the years?
A Brief History of Black Friday
Black Friday started out as pure commercialism, even without the name. Over time, the day — heralding the start of the biggest shopping period of the year — developed to the point where many companies made a good portion, if not all, of their revenue in just one month.
For those companies, the success of the season is very important, and they will promote anything that helps in that regard. At the request of the merchant, FDR Touched Gratitude added a week in 1939 to provide an extra week for the season.
Origin of name
In the late 1950s, factory management is said to have commented that the day triggered a disease that caused employee absenteeism – a disease only surpassed by the Black Death.
While not all too specious stories can be recorded, what can and was recorded is a publication in Philadelphia reporting that police referred to it as “Black Friday” the day after Thanksgiving, referring to It is the extreme traffic of cars and pedestrians that causes them endless trouble. Hence, the name was coined after the crowd that made Black Friday so successful for businessmen.
However, the troublesome connotation that Black Friday is a capital T has caused concern among businessmen who profit from it. In the 1980s, they started spreading the word about the origin of the name because it was the first day of the year that most businesses were “profitable” – meaning the first profit of the year. This makes little sense, since most companies see profits from their SEC filings every quarter, but it’s a good story to counteract the negativity that large crowds cause trouble.
When does black friday start
Black Friday has started earlier and earlier over the years. At first, sales usually started before the parade ended because people were there to be told about them, but now news comes earlier, with shops opening at 5am, 4am or even midnight. In 2010, Toys ‘R’ Us began Black Friday sales at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Many big box retailers are now open at midnight on Thursday night on Black Friday.
So the reason for Black Friday is the start of the Christmas shopping season. Since Christmas is the most lucrative period of its kind, surpassing even Halloween in second place, this makes perfect sense for retailers. Selling items at a loss — hoping customers will buy more at full retail price — is common, and discounts of up to 80% or more are not unheard of. Fundamentally, this is a day of consumerism and commercialism.
