Black Friday: How A Negative Term Became A Shopping Phenomenon

Black Friday, which falls on Nov. 28 this year, refers to the Friday immediately after Thanksgiving. It has long marked the start of the holiday shopping season in the United States. Retailers traditionally launch significant, time-limited discounts to draw huge crowds into stores while matching the offers online. Over the years, this rush has consistently become the busiest shopping day in America in terms of footfall, even if it is not always the day with the highest total sales.

According to Britannica, one explanation claims that shops operate in the red, which is a state of losing money, for most of the year and only move into the black, as a reference to making a profit, after the surge in post-Thanksgiving spending. Though this narrative became widespread in the late 1980s, it does not reflect the original meaning. In fact, for many years, the Saturday before Christmas often generated higher sales.

Some theories link the origin of the term to the 1950s, when Philadelphia police officers began referring to the post-Thanksgiving Friday as Black Friday, according to Investopedia. They used the phrase to describe the strain of managing heavy traffic, crowded streets and long hours as hordes of shoppers poured into the city, either to begin their holiday spending or to attend the Army-Navy football game the following day. Retailers initially resisted the phrase because of its negative connotations, yet the name persisted and ultimately proved catchier than the straightforward “Day After Thanksgiving.”

By the late 1980s, the retail industry had embraced the more appealing narrative that Black Friday marked the point when annual earnings finally shifted “into the black.” This rebranding helped the term gain traction, positioning it as the launch of the holiday shopping season. In the years that followed, especially the 2000s, Black Friday cemented its reputation as the biggest shopping day of the year, a title once held by the Saturday before Christmas. As more retailers pushed heavily advertised, “can’t miss” post-Thanksgiving deals and the discounts became increasingly steep, shoppers across the US were drawn more strongly to the day’s growing retail pull.

The phrase once had a very different meaning, entirely unrelated to shopping. On Sept. 24, 1869, Wall Street financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk attempted to corner the US gold market by buying massive quantities of the yellow metal. When the scheme collapsed following intervention by then President Ulysses S Grant, the market crashed, leaving thousands in financial ruin. That event was also known as Black Friday.