Black Friday
Why Friday?
Where does the “black” of Black Friday actually come from?
Two events in the last century contributed to the creation of this name. It has to do with the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is celebrated in the US the 4th Thursday in November.
The following day is the day many Americans then began Christmas shopping. This makes it one of the largest shopping weekends in history. As a result, the inner cities and shopping centers became clogged with cars and traffic. As a result, the police had to work long days because it was black with cars and traffic had to be regulated.
The term Black Friday and Black Saturday then appears in the media in the state of Philadelphia (the Public Relations News, a newsletter by journalist Denny Griswold) as a result of that traffic rush. Basically just how we in Europe know “Black Saturday” at the beginning of the summer vacations.
Big Friday versus Black Friday
As more consumers began using this term, there was resistance to it for a time because of the negative customer. During that period, the name Big Friday was used.
In the 1980s, the term regained a positive spin by referring to retailers writing black numbers ( a positive operating result) rather than red numbers (negative operating result).
This explanation was used as an incentive to increase the impact of Black Friday.
Increasingly, this is cited as the explanation for the choice of name, but from the historical perspective, the version about the policemen remains the most commonly used explanation.
Scale
In the 1990s, it slowly turned from a designation into a retail event as some U.S. states designated it as an official day off. Stores also began using special discount offers and adjusted opening hours to win customer favor. Opening at night or facilitating queues in front of stores made us get more media attention and more people become aware of bargain hunting.
A Spin Off has also emerged: Cyber Monday: the Monday after Black Friday where many online stores also offer high discounts. This is partly why the term Black Friday has gained a foothold in the Netherlands: we don’t have Thanksgiving here, so there is no such relationship. But because online stores have the discounts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday (as well as Singles Day in early November) available in Europe and the Netherlands, some retailers have chosen to use Black Friday as the day the bargains are available as well.
