Public Domain photo

Dustin White
Editor

Shoppers camping outside, waiting for a chance to snag quality deals, is a sight many expect to see on the Friday following Thanksgiving. It’s the day that marks the beginning of the Holiday shopping season, and in some ways, seems to overshadow the day of thanks. For the younger generations, it has become almost a holiday onto itself. However, it wasn’t all that long ago when Black Friday never was.

While today, Black Friday denotes a day of deals, and maintains a level of positivity, its origins were quite derisive. First appearing as a name for the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1951, the term was used to refer to the practice of workers calling in sick.

It was a problem that many retailers were facing, especially since it marked the beginning of the Holiday shopping season. While some store owners tried to persuade their workers to come in by punishing those who called in sick, with illegitimate illnesses, by denying Thanksgiving pay, others started to treat the day as if it was another holiday, and offering holiday pay.



Nearly a decade later, the term would be adopted by the Philadelphia police, who used it as a derisive name for the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. While citizens, as well as large numbers of visitors, would head downtown for shopping, the police were left to deal with the chaos that was caused by the extra pedestrian and vehicular traffic hordes descending on the city.

Traffic jams became a customary occurrence over those two days, which caused all of Philadelphia’s traffic policemen to be on duty. With school being closed, Santa taking his seat at the mall and the Army-Navy football game getting set to be played, Philadelphia eventually had to order the police band to help maintain traffic.

In the early 1960s, with the chaos rising to monumental heights, local reporters began to put together front page stories, using the name Black Friday, to describe the terrible traffic conditions that the city was faced with on a yearly basis. Such stories began appearing year after year in the newspaper, and eventually, television stations began picking up the name as well.

Black days in history
Retailers eventually began pushing back against the term Black Friday because of the negative connotation that black days of the week had incurred. One of the first examples of such usage was with Black Thursday, which was given to Oct. 24, 1929; the day that signaled the start of the Great Depression.

Following that dark day in history was Black Tuesday, just one week later, which referred to the stock market losing 11%, which destroyed any confidence investors had left in the stock market.

Realizing the negative connotations that these days had, as well as the derisive meaning that Black Friday had developed, retailers wanted to find a way to give the day a more positive spin. For them, it was a day that was quite profitable, and signaled a shopping season that included the most profitable days of the year.

Worried that the disturbing sounding nickname would begin to hurt sale, retailers began encouraging a more optimistic explanation. By the 1980s, the story began circulating that Black Friday, based on the idea that accountants used black to signify profit and red to signify loss, was when retailers moved “into the black,” by showing a profit for the year.

Largest shopping day of the history
With Black Friday having been given a more positive meaning, it began building a new mythology. As the new explanation for the day took hold, it also started being known as the biggest shopping day of the year.

However, while Black Friday is a day in which record number shoppers descend on stores, making it one of the busiest days in terms of traffics, it isn’t necessarily so in sales. Instead, it generally rests in between the fourth and eighth position, with the Saturday before Christmas usually occupying the top spot.

In recent years, Black Friday has also started to take on a different sort of negative connotation, with many seeing it encroaching on Thanksgiving, with sales beginning on Thursday, as well as being associated with violence. Which once again brings it back to its origins, as a day associated with chaos for the police.