The term “Black Friday,” contrary to popular belief, was not always used to mark the holiday shopping season post-Thanksgiving. For a century, the term was used was to denote an American financial crisis— the crash of the U.S. gold market in 1869.
This first “Black Friday” was led by two Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk. After buying up gold hoping to drive up prices, their scheme was exposed, sending the stock market into a free-fall, bankrupting everyone from Wall Street to small-town farmers.
Many shoppers today associate the origin of “Black Friday” with accounting terms used to describe profit margins. After operating “in the red,” or being at a loss, for most of the year, companies would move “into the black” by making profits the day after Thanksgiving since customers were willing to spend more on discounted merchandise. While these terms do exist, they don’t accurately or even fully explain how this shopping event came to be.
Black Friday has much darker roots. In the 1950s, Philadelphia police officers used the term “Black Friday” to describe the influx of unruly and often dangerous shoppers and tourists who would file into the city in preparation for the yearly Army-Navy football game held the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Plagued by long-shifts and shoplifters capitalizing on the chaos, law enforcement came to dread Thanksgiving weekend.
By 1961, Philadelphia’ businesses tried to rename the season “Big Friday” to remove the negative connotations, to no avail.
It was not until the late 1980s when “Black Friday” became popular nationwide. Retailers successfully found a way to reinvent the phrase into a more positive reflection of American shopping habits. The one-day shopping extravaganza has since morphed into a four-day event, including the increasingly popular “Cyber Monday.”
In recent years, the issue of inflation has dampened the holiday-shopping spirit amongst consumers. Retailers will be facing an uphill battle as the 2024 shopping season is shorter than usual; this year has the fewest number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas since 2019. Additionally, according to Salesforce, 43% of consumers are carrying more debt than they were from 2023.
Caila Schwartz, Director of Strategy and Consumer Insights at Salesforce, claims this year’s holiday season will be competitive and “no doubt focused on pricing and discounting strategies.” This sentiment mirrors some of Skyline student’s shopping habits. Skyline junior Charlotte Pearse says that this year, she plans on buying “not that much,” as it depends on the sales she can find in store.
The definition of “Black Friday” has been shaped by stock market scandals and the public perception of consumerism around the holidays. Only time will tell how successful 2024 “Black Friday” sales will be and if the in-person shopping experience will get anywhere near as rowdy as it was in the 1950s.
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