The lovely month of November has started which means that we have enjoyed our Halloween parties well and now this month we need to wait for two other main events. Yes, we are talking about Thanksgiving and Black Friday which comes at the end of November. But here we will talk about why it is called Black Friday, what is the history of this day and what comes with this Black Friday.
Black Friday is a term that marks the first Friday after Thanksgiving when brands put huge sales on their products. It is not a holiday or an event but it is a day that is celebrated by giving discounts on shopping before Christmas. The trend of Black Friday started in the United States but later it spread to other countries as well and now almost every country has a Black Friday sale. The meaning behind the sale on shopping marks the start of the Christmas shopping season.
Since Thanksgiving is always celebrated on the last Thursday of November, so the next day after thanksgiving which is a Friday is set as Black Friday to start the tradition of shopping for Christmas.
The accurate explanation of the history of Black Friday is termed to be related to two events that happened in the early 1960s,1869s and 1980s. We will discuss the three events of the past in detail.
In 1960, in America, some Philadelphia police officers started using the term Black Friday. The police officers referred to the term Black Friday to the chaos and mismanagement they had to face when Suburban tourists came to the city for shopping and also sometimes attended the Army-Navy football game that was held on Saturdays after Thanksgiving.
The huge crowds of people together in one city led to long duty hours and lots of accidents, fights, shoplifting, traffic jams and lots of other issues. In both of these situations, the police officers had to work double than before and their duty became havoc for them, so they started using the term Black Friday to refer to those chaotic times.
Another event that happened in America in 1869 led to call the Friday to be called Black Friday because of a loss that happened in the market. In America, two financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk attempted to gird up all the gold on Wall street to send prices to a skyrocketing level which resulted in a big loss and left many stockholder Americans bankrupt. After this chaos, US President Ulysses S. Grant intervened in the situation on Friday, September 24 and made their plan fall apart.
This event in history caused a lot of loss to many people so the Friday was called Black Friday because of the sadness and loss it caused to thousands of Americans.
In the 1980s, some American merchants thought of an idea to gather huge profits for the whole year so they used a red-to-black profit narrative to increase their sales. They started to offer huge sales on Saturday before Christmas which resulted in huge profits and soared their sales highest for the whole year.
All of these events might not relate to each other and make any sense but three things all of them have in common and that is the presence of Friday, an event that took brought many people together and holiday time. Whether something good or bad happened on those Fridays but all of these Fridays came during holiday time and subsequently made the Friday to be called Black Friday to do more shopping, gain profits and have a good time before Christmas.
The Black Friday shopping day originally started in America and after its popularity and benefits, it got spread to all parts of the world except some countries.
Now black Friday is only referred to as a day with huge shopping discounts and the start of shopping before the Christmas holiday.
This year black Friday will arrive on 25 November after the Thanksgiving holiday.
In the early days, the Black Friday sale was a very big deal for shopping because it only lasted for a day. The concept was very unique to drive the highest sales of the year in just one day and it worked perfectly.
But some retailers changed the course of the Black Friday sale and extended it to a few days to gain more profits in their sales and after that, almost all retailers and merchants jumped on the same train and extended their Black Friday sale as well.
Nowadays, a Black Friday sale starts from the next day of Thanksgiving on Friday and lasts the whole weekend until (Cyber Monday) in America and Monday in other countries.
Black Friday doesn’t have a specific date like other occasions like Christmas, Halloween and Thanksgiving or any other holidays. As we have discussed before, Black Friday comes the next day after Thanksgiving Thursday. So Black Friday doesn’t have a specific date but it comes on the Friday right after the Thanksgiving holiday.
There are some countries which are against the Black Friday shopping day and these are Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela and North Korea. These countries are the only country participants that don’t support the Black Friday shopping day.
So, now we have wrapped up the Black Friday mystery for you all in one place. It is weird to think how different events that don’t relate to each other, led to Black Friday day but here we have it and we actively enjoy the day on a shopping spree for Christmas.
