Black Friday

Camilla Schmidt | 28 November 2008 | Words

It's Black Friday today and all over the USA customers are rushing to the shops.

Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving, which falls on the fourth Thursday in November. In 2008 it falls today - on Friday the 28th of November.

The busiest shopping day?

It’s known to be the busiest retail-shopping day of the year in terms of customer traffic. Shoppers line up hours before stores with deep discounts open even though retailers often open at 5 am or even earlier on this day. In 2003 and 2005 it actually was the busiest shopping day in the US. Black Friday is not an official holiday but many take the day off which increases the number of potential shoppers.

The origin of the Black Friday

Originally the term Black Friday refers to a term used by the Philadelphia Police Department as early as 1966 to describe the massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks. More recently the expression relates to the beginning of a period in which retailers are making profit and turning their numbers from red to black.

Implicitly Black Friday is a comparison to the extremely chaotic Black Tuesday the 1929 stock-market crash.

As to the name Black Friday retailers involved are adding an extra clause to emphasise the point. ‘It’s the employees, we’re the ones who call it Black Friday’, said Belle Stephens of Moorestown Mall. ‘We work extra hard. It’s a long hard day for employees’.