BLACK FRIDAY
Most famous and craziest shopping time, Black Friday!
Black Friday, where most stores prepare discounts and campaigns for their customers, has become a crazy day that started in the United States and spread all over the world. Black Friday is a colloquial term for the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices and often open early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving.
So, how did the Black Friday day, which we are looking forward to now, come about? Where did the name “Black Friday” come from?
Different stories are mentioned in various sources for the origin of Black Friday. The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall, and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.
The most commonly repeated story behind the Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“went into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. Though it is true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, this version of Black Friday’s origin is the officially sanctioned—but inaccurate—story behind the tradition.
The real history behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers might have you believe. Back in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would Philly police officers not be able to take the day off, but they would have to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters would also take advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.
By 1961, “Black Friday” had caught on in Philadelphia, to the extent that the city’s merchants and boosters tried unsuccessfully to change it to “Big Friday” in order to remove the negative connotations. The term did not spread to the rest of the country until much later, however, and as recently as 1985 it was not in common use nationwide. Sometime in the late 1980s, however, retailers found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively, rather than negatively, on them and their customers. The result was the “red to black” concept of the holiday mentioned earlier, and the notion that the day after Thanksgiving marked the occasion when America’s stores finally turned a profit. Therefore, it is possible to see mainly black and red colors in Black Friday concepts.
It originally had a negative notation, but by the time the 1980’s rolled around, retailers reformed the term into a positive one, and most people saw this as an opportunity to create profit.
However, overtime Black Friday has stretched out into the Thanksgiving holiday, as retailers would start opening their doors earlier to allow customers to frantically buy their products. This has caused some safety issues, as crowds of people would flood stores to get their items, causing chaos at times. But now almost every store has an online shopping system, which reduces the occurrence of these chaos drastically and allows us to just enjoy today. Customers can easily find any product they are looking for with online shopping on Black Friday.
You may not only think of Black Friday as buying something for yourself, but also make small surprises for your loved ones. You can also evaluate today by buying gifts for your loved ones by taking advantage of discounted prices and campaigns.
How to celebrate Black Friday?
Determine the products you will buy in advance: It is especially important to determine the products you intend to buy before the discount campaigns. Thus, you can protect yourself from price swindles by seeing what the non-discounted price is.
Online Shopping: You can benefit from technology, which is one of the most beautiful benefits of the era we live in. You can get both more and earlier discounts by shopping on the websites or applications of your favorite brands. You can also enjoy shopping easily from your home without having to go into the crowd.
Focus on the products you need: Sometimes we are all fascinated by discounts to buy products we do not really need or buy in plus quantities. No matter how cheap, a discount does not mean you get it for free. If necessary, a list can be prepared by determining the needs.
Although the name is a little pessimistic, Black Friday is a pleasant day to pamper ourselves. You can buy the products you have wanted for a long time and reward yourself. Leave everything aside today and enjoy your shopping.
