Black Friday: How did it start?

The term Black Friday dates back to 1869, the day the stock market crashed after gold prices plummeted. It had technically nothing to do with holiday shopping, History.com said.

Many believe the term was adopted to describe the day that stores that have been “in the red” in their ledger books would be “in the black” as people shopped.

But according to Britannica, that is not true.

“Black Friday” to signify the busy shopping day dates back to the 1960s and police officers in Philadelphia who used it “to describe the chaos that resulted when large numbers of suburban tourists came into the city to begin their holiday shopping and, in some years, attend Saturday’s annual Army-Navy football game.,” Britannica said.

After a couple of years, Philly retailers started calling the day of deals “Black Friday” but it really didn’t take hold nationwide until the 1980s, and when store owners started using it to describe the accounting terms and putting their annual sales helping them be ”in the black.” In reality, while a marketing ploy, most stories, according to Britannica, have their biggest shopping day the Saturday before Christmas.

In years past, Black Friday would find people lined up, some as early as Thanksgiving night, to snag “doorbuster” deals, but NBC News reported that it isn’t as popular as it was before, with Black Friday being replaced by “Black November,” or a month-long series of discounts that lead to Thanksgiving.

“Black Friday used to be a trigger for people to go to the store,” Barbara Kahn from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said. “But as it’s morphed into a general promotional season, Black Friday itself lost its magic: its sense of urgency.”

“Thanksgiving weekend used to be the start of the shopping season, but now we look at it as more of a halfway point,” Katherine Cullen, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, said. “Black Friday and Cyber Monday are hallmark events that have a very important place both for consumers and retailers, but within a broader context of a longer shopping season.”

The NRF estimates that people will spend between $979.5 billion and $989 billion in November and December with 183.4 million people shopping during the Thanksgiving weekend in 2024.