Black Friday is the biggest sale event of the year, when many products are heavily discounted.
Since its widespread popularity, differing theories have spread about the origin of the name “Black Friday.”
The name was coined back in the late 1860s when a major stock market crashed.
Black Friday is the one day shoppers can find the best deals on just about any product, online and in stores. Mattresses, laptops, stand mixers, and so much more drop to all-time low prices, often with very limited stock.
But have you ever wondered where the holiday shopping extravaganza got its name?
Many people believe we call the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” because stores would go from operating at a loss, or being “in the red,” to earning a profit, or being “in the black.” While that’s technically true, the origins of the term are a bit darker.
Why is it called Black Friday?
The term “Black Friday” was first coined in 1869 when two investors, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk, caused a market crash by driving up the price of gold. As a reult, the stock market dropped 20%, foreign trade stopped, and farmers witnessed a huge drop in corn and wheat value.
Much later, in Philadelphia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the term was resurrected and used to refer to the day between Thanksgiving and the Army-Navy game. The event would summon large crowds of tourists and shoppers, requiring extra hours put in by law enforcement to moderate the traffic.
It wouldn’t be until the late 1980s that the term became synonymous with shopping. Retailers reinvented the “Black Friday” name to reflect the backstory of how accountants used different color ink — red for negative earnings, and black for positive earnings — to denote a company’s profitability. Black Friday became the day when stores finally turned a profit.
Of course, the name stuck, and since then, Black Friday has evolved into a season-long event that’s spawned more shopping holidays, like Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
When is Black Friday 2022?
This year, Black Friday lands on November 25. Cyber Monday, the online-only sale event that follows, lands on November 28. In recent years, the two shopping events have become synonymous due to their proximity.