Black Friday

[Rita]

A friend at work ask me about Black Friday, now it seems to have spread to the week before thanksgiving even in the U.K . However we both wondered why is it called Black Friday , and what’s the original story behind why it began ?

 

[amadeus]

A friend at work ask me about Black Friday, now it seems to have spread to the week before thanksgiving even in the U.K . However we both wondered why is it called Black Friday , and what’s the original story behind why it began ?

Copied the following from an Internet site:

While it wasn’t called “Black Friday” until the 1960s, and then not popularly called such until the last two decades, retailers have been trying to push people to shop the Friday after Thanksgiving since the late 19th /early 20th century. Around this time, it was very popular for various department stores, such as Macy’s and Eaton’s, to sponsor parades that would occur the day after Thanksgiving. These parades would typically be a major part of Christmas advertising campaigns by these stores. This, in turn, would ultimately result in a lot of people going shopping after the parades were over.

Over time, this melded into a commonly accepted unwritten rule among most major department stores to hold off on their major Christmas advertising pushes until after Thanksgiving; specifically, to hold off until after these parades were over.

By the 1930s, the Friday after Thanksgiving had become the official start of the Christmas shopping season among the vast majority of retailers out there. However, this tradition ultimately resulted in retailers being unhappy with the length of the Christmas shopping season on Novembers where the last Thursday was the fifth Thursday in November (Thanksgiving at that time was always on the last Thursday of November). Thus, with the strong encouragement of lobbyists for various retailers, President Roosevelt, in 1939, decided to change the official date of Thanksgiving to be on the second to last Thursday in November, in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season as much as possible, with the hope that it would boost sales for retailers and, thus, boost the economy.

 

[Rita]

Thanks amedeus,
So I wonder what it was called before and why it got changed. I always thought Black Friday was the Friday before thanksgiving ( it’s the coming weekend isn’t it? ) which , this year is the last Friday in November.
So has it extended over in the US as well or do they still keep to the one day ?

 

[Helen]

Thanks amedeus,
So I wonder what it was called before and why it got changed. I always thought Black Friday was the Friday before thanksgiving ( it’s the coming weekend isn’t it? ) which , this year is the last Friday in November.
So has it extended over in the US as well or do they still keep to the one day ?

Glad you asked OP.
I”ve never known. I wonder why BLACK. I thought that somehow ot had links back to the Great Depression.

So, does England “ do” Thanksgiving Now?

Canada always does it in early October because the harvest comes much earlier in the North.

 

[amadeus]

Thanks amedeus,
So I wonder what it was called before and why it got changed. I always thought Black Friday was the Friday before thanksgiving ( it’s the coming weekend isn’t it? ) which , this year is the last Friday in November.
So has it extended over in the US as well or do they still keep to the one day ?

Lots of advertisers already making their "early" black Friday offers. Whatever works to get people to spend money for what they have sell is just about what they do.

 

[JohnPaul]

I’ve never once got involved in Black Friday, there have been cases of people getting stampeded to death once the doors are opened, no thank you!

 

[Nancy]

Copied the following from an Internet site:

While it wasn’t called “Black Friday” until the 1960s, and then not popularly called such until the last two decades, retailers have been trying to push people to shop the Friday after Thanksgiving since the late 19th /early 20th century. Around this time, it was very popular for various department stores, such as Macy’s and Eaton’s, to sponsor parades that would occur the day after Thanksgiving. These parades would typically be a major part of Christmas advertising campaigns by these stores. This, in turn, would ultimately result in a lot of people going shopping after the parades were over.

Over time, this melded into a commonly accepted unwritten rule among most major department stores to hold off on their major Christmas advertising pushes until after Thanksgiving; specifically, to hold off until after these parades were over.

By the 1930s, the Friday after Thanksgiving had become the official start of the Christmas shopping season among the vast majority of retailers out there. However, this tradition ultimately resulted in retailers being unhappy with the length of the Christmas shopping season on Novembers where the last Thursday was the fifth Thursday in November (Thanksgiving at that time was always on the last Thursday of November). Thus, with the strong encouragement of lobbyists for various retailers, President Roosevelt, in 1939, decided to change the official date of Thanksgiving to be on the second to last Thursday in November, in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season as much as possible, with the hope that it would boost sales for retailers and, thus, boost the economy.

Yeah, let's keep those retailers in the black and not the red, lol

 

[Faithbuilders]

I used to work at Walmart, and I was told that it was called BLACK Friday because of the good deals, mixed with crazy, greedy people, there were often people that got trampled to death in the rush to get the best deals!