How much do you know about Friday the 13th , and do you know the mythical origins of the name Friday? Feedback We've Added New Words! Word of the Day. Meanings Meanings. Where did Black Friday come from? Word of the day. Today, most consumers associate Black Friday with the black ink retailers see from increased sales. Over the years, frenzied crowds competing for discounted merchandise have resulted in violence and injuries, including 12 deaths.
So if you decide to participate in one of the biggest shopping days of the year, try to have a bit of compassion for others. Consider staying home and scoring deals from the comfort and safety of your computer.
If you do have to go out, wear a mask. Most important, give yourself a break if your budget is tight this year. If it matters to you, it matters to us. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Retailers may spend an entire year planning their Black Friday sales. They use the day as an opportunity to offer rock-bottom prices on overstock inventory and to offer doorbusters and discounts on seasonal items, such as holiday decorations and typical holiday gifts.
Retailers also offer significant discounts on big-ticket items and top-selling brands of TVs, smart devices, and other electronics, luring customers in the hope that, once inside, they will purchase higher-margin goods. The contents of Black Friday advertisements are often so highly anticipated that retailers go to great lengths to ensure that they don't leak out publicly beforehand.
Consumers often shop on Black Friday for the hottest trending items, which can lead to stampedes and violence in the absence of adequate security. For example, on Black Friday in , customers engaged in scuffles, fistfights, and stampedes in stores across the U.
Appallingly, a worker at a big store was even trampled to death on Black Friday in , as throngs of shoppers pushed their way into the store when the doors opened. The concept of retailers throwing post-Turkey Day sales started long before the day was actually coined "Black Friday. So why the name? Some say the day is called "Black Friday" in homage to the term "black" referring to being profitable, which stems from the old bookkeeping practice of recording profits in black ink and losses in red ink.
However, long before it started appearing in advertisements and commercials, the term was actually coined by overworked Philadelphia police officers. In the s, crowds of shoppers and visitors flooded the City of Brotherly Love the day after Thanksgiving. Not only did Philadelphia stores tout major sales and the unveiling of holiday decorations on this special day, but the city also hosted the Army-Navy football game on Saturday of the same weekend.
As a result, traffic cops were required to work hour shifts to deal with the throngs of drivers and pedestrians, and they were not allowed to take the day off. Over time, the annoyed officers—using a descriptive that's no longer acceptable—started to refer to this dreaded workday as "Black Friday. It remained Philadelphia slang for a few decades, spreading to a few nearby cities, such as Trenton, N. Somewhere along the way, Black Friday made the giant leap from congested streets and crowded stores to fevered shoppers fighting over parking spaces and tussling over the latest must-have toy.
When did Black Friday become the frenzied, over-the-top shopping event it is today? That would be in the s when Black Friday was officially designated the biggest shopping day of the year. Until then, that title had gone to the Saturday before Christmas. In , Walmart announced that, instead of opening its doors on Friday morning, it would start sales on Thanksgiving evening. That started a frenzy among other big box retailers who quickly followed suit.
Today, Black Friday is a longer event—a Black Weekend. For online retailers, a similar tradition has arisen on the Monday following Thanksgiving— Cyber Monday. The idea is that consumers return to work after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, ready to start shopping. Online retailers often herald their promotions and sales prior to the actual day in order to compete against the Black Friday offerings at brick-and-mortar stores. As a result, in terms of sales, Cyber Monday has proved to be a hit among shoppers.
While Cyber Monday had traditionally been the biggest online shopping day of the year, it was surpassed by Black Friday in Also part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend shopping bonanza is Small Business Saturday , which was was created to encourage consumers to shop locally at small businesses. With people spending rather hefty sums of money on this notoriously busy shopping day, the sales chalked up on Black Friday are often thought of as a litmus test for the overall economic condition of the country and a way for economists to measure the confidence of the average American when it comes to discretionary spending.
Those who share the Keynesian assumption that spending drives economic activity view lower Black Friday sales figures as a harbinger of slower growth. Some investors and analysts look at Black Friday numbers as a way to gauge the overall health of the entire retail industry. Others scoff at the notion that Black Friday has any real fourth-quarter predictability for the stock markets as a whole.
Instead, they suggest that it only causes very short-term gains or losses. However, in general, the stock market can be affected by having extra days off for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It tends to see increased trading activity and higher returns the day before a holiday or a long weekend, a phenomenon known as the holiday effect or the weekend effect.
Many traders look to capitalize on these seasonal bumps. The money spent by consumers on Black Friday is seen as a measure of the economy.
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