Black Friday
Friday, November 25th, 2016November 25, 2016
Today, Friday, November 25, is “Black Friday,” a day of shopping mania and early retail sales that follows the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. The day after Thanksgiving (which most people have off work and school, creating an extra-long weekend) has long been the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season. This special shopping day first earned the name “Black Friday” in 1961, when the term was used to warn people of traffic delays and the general mayhem associated with people rushing to secure shopping deals. Since then, the chaos has generally increased, resulting in occasional stampedes and chaos and even fights as people struggle to cash-in on “limited-time” savings.
For decades, the standard Black Friday opening time was 6 a.m., but those hours gradually crept backward, finally hitting midnight in the 2000’s. Many large retailers then gave up and just opened on Thanksgiving, angering many employees and even warding off some shoppers. In recent years, however, things have quieted somewhat, with many stores running Black Friday sales for several days, even weeks, and with a large percentage of people turning to the Internet to make purchases online. This large increase in e-commerce has created its own special shopping extravaganza, the Monday after Black Friday, which is commonly called “Cyber Monday.”
Today, most people associate Black Friday with manic shopping, but other uses of the term are much more serious. “Black Friday” sometimes refers to Good Friday or Friday the 13th, but most Black Fridays mark days of particular violence, unrest, or economic upheaval, such as battles, disasters, financial emergencies, massacres, riots, or scandals. Perhaps the most famous “Black” day of all, however, was not a Friday at all, but rather a Tuesday. On Black Tuesday, Oct. 29, 1929, the stock market crashed and thousands of people lost huge sums of money. Black Tuesday is often tabbed as the beginning of the Great Depression.