Yahoo News This is how 'Black Friday' got its name
The day after Thanksgiving is the time when turkey-stuffed shoppers in the US (and now everyone else around the world, too) enter the depths of crowded stores in hopes of getting some of this season's best discount prices.
Each year, it seems like stores offer their biggest and best Black Friday deals yet. This may be great for bargain shoppers, but the actual history of the Black Friday is darker than you'd probably think.
There have been many myths surrounding the origins of the super shopper day. The naming is commonly mistakenly attributed to the idea that retailers stop recording their losses in red ink and finally turn a profit, which would be written in black, according CNN Money.
But the term "Black Friday" doesn't come from retail. In fact, it has nothing to do with shopping at all.
According to the History Channel, in the 1950s, Philadelphia police used the term to describe the chaos on the day after Thanksgiving, when hundreds of suburban tourists would pack into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game, causing a bit of a headache for the police force.
[Army-Navy game in Philadelphia, November 1954]
City merchants also began using 'Black Friday' to describe the long lines and shopping madness at their stores. Because of the negative connotation, the city's business owners and marketers tried unsuccessfully to rebrand the day as 'Big Friday' in 1961.
Black Friday didn't spread to the rest of America until 1985, and it took until around 2013 for it to pick up any traction in the UK. Ever since, retailers globally have embraced the name and shoppers have embraced the deals.
These days the extreme bargain-shopping day has taken full force, becoming a four-day buying extravaganza with spin-offs such as Small Business Saturday/Sunday and Cyber Monday.
Modern shoppers don't even have to wait until midnight to begin their Christmas conquest, with an increasing number of stores offering a multitude of online deals in the days leading up to Black Friday itself.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.
You Might Also Like
