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Black Friday Is An Informal Name For The Friday Following

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, marking the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Stores offer major sales and open very early or start sales on Thanksgiving to attract shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, though spending declined for the first time in 2014. The term originated in Philadelphia to describe heavy traffic on that day after Thanksgiving as people went shopping.

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61 views1 page

Black Friday Is An Informal Name For The Friday Following

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, marking the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Stores offer major sales and open very early or start sales on Thanksgiving to attract shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, though spending declined for the first time in 2014. The term originated in Philadelphia to describe heavy traffic on that day after Thanksgiving as people went shopping.

Uploaded by

Irina Iordache
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Black Friday is an informal name for the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States,

which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The day after Thanksgiving has been
regarded as the beginning of America's Christmas shopping season since 1952, although the term
"Black Friday" didn't become widely used until more recent decades.
Many stores offer highly promoted sales on Black Friday and open very early, such as at midnight,
or may even start their sales at some time on Thanksgiving. Black Friday is not an official holiday,
but California and some other states observe "The Day After Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state
government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday, such as Columbus Day. Many
non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along
with the following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby increasing the number of
potential shoppers.
Black Friday has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States since
2005,[2] although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate,[3] have described it as the busiest
shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time.[4] Similar stories resurface year upon year
at this time, portraying hysteria and shortage of stock, creating a state of positive feedback.
In 2014, spending volume on Black Friday fell for the first time since the 2008 recession. $50.9
billion was spent during the 4-day Black Friday weekend, down 11% from the previous year.
However, the U.S. economy was not in a recession. Christmas creep has been cited as a factor in
the diminishing importance of Black Friday, as many retailers now spread out their promotions over
the entire months of November and December rather than concentrate them on a single shopping
day or weekend.[5]
The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday applied to the day after Thanksgiving in a shopping
context suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy
and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This
usage dates to at least 1961. More than twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread,
a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to
turn a profit, thus going from being "in the red" to being "in the black".[6][7][8][9]

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