The History Of Black Friday
Black Friday is as normal to us as breathing air. Every year, we gear up for finally getting through that shopping list of what we’ve wanted for the year with some wonderfully drastic price cuts. What’s not to like? All the major stores participate in this one, all out event, which falls onto the 26th of November in 2021.
Yet, most people don’t know where Black Friday actually originated from - and with the day being only a few weeks away, why not learn some November trivia to share over the Thanksgiving table?
Since 2005, the post-Thanksgiving day of Black Friday has been the busiest shopping day in the US. Yet, the term now commonly used for a shopping thrill didn’t actually have glamorous origins - initially, it was used to describe an 1869 market crash, which took years for the economy to recover from. It was only about a century later, in the 1950s/60s, when the term ‘Black Friday’ was actually used to describe a shopping event - but only described as that by the police.
In 1961, it was recorded that the Philadelphia police started calling the mass foot traffic after Thanksgiving ‘Black Friday’. Not just the foot traffic, but the traffic jams and overcrowding of stores meant that the streets were full to the brim. Police officers ended up having to work 12 hour shifts, and yearby year, it became a norm that they were unable to get a day off after Thanksgiving. They referred to the day as ‘Black Friday’, and the term soon caught on with retailers, who wanted to use it for marketing purposes.
Over the last few decades, the term has only gotten more and more popular - right up until the 2000s, when brick and mortar stores could be accompanied by deals on online stores. And so, Black Friday came to be the famous shopping event that it is now.
