Thanksgiving has been a celebrated holiday in the US since 1863 and is celebrated in many countries on various dates during the fall. It is a time to celebrate family and harvest.
In more recent history another day has been synonymous with this holiday, but has been around since 1869, just a few years after Thanksgiving was introduced. We know this day as Black Friday. Just the mention of the day brings thoughts of mothers fighting over exclusive toys and mobs of people rushing department stores to get a new flat screen tv at a fraction of the usual price, but what is the actual history of Black Friday?
In the 1950’s and 60’s employers began using this term to describe the lack of employee presence the day after Thanksgiving as people were skipping work to stay home with their families another day. They also used this term to describe the chaos of traffic and crowds of excited people showing up to the traditional Army-Navy football games in Philadelphia every year.
Once we reached the 1980’s, many business started using this term to describe their books going into the busy holiday season as people started buying gifts and bringing their accounts from red to black. This was the beginning of the height of retail craziness associated with Black Friday.
This is considered by most to be the true first day of Christmas shopping and most stores kick off their holiday sales on this day, offering lower than low prices on anything from electronics and appliances to clothing and home decor. Black Friday starts extremely early in the morning with many shoppers beginning to camp out in front of stores after they have eaten Thanksgiving dinner with their families.
In more recent times we have also acknowledged Cyber Monday which describes the introduction of online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. This has brought the first weekend of holiday shopping to a new level since the mid 2010’s. While Black Friday is still the busiest day for in-store shoppers. Cyber Monday and online shopping has introduced an easy way to take advantage of holiday sales without having to go out into the mob of shoppers.
