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History of Black Friday

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The history of Black Friday goes back almost 150 years. The day was coined as “Black Friday” in the 1960s to mark the unofficial beginning of the holiday shopping season. However, this was not the first time the phrase had been used. It was first heard on September 24, 1869, when the US gold market crashed. This was due to two Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, who bought as much of the nation’s gold as possible in hope for a profit, but rather crashed the market. This day became known as the Black Friday.

Later on in the 1900s, retailers and other stores kept accounting by hand and used two colors of ink; red and black. Red ink signified a loss and if a company wasn’t doing well, they were “in the red”. Black ink was used when businesses were doing well. Most stores went “out of the red” and “into the black” on the day after Thanksgiving.

In 1924, the tradition of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began and stores continued to do well the day after. It then began to be thought of as the beginning of the holiday shopping season. In the early 1950s, Philadelphia police complained about the hoards of shoppers that would flood the streets on this day and began calling the day Black Friday. This adopted a negative connotation but still gained popularity.

Nevertheless, the official name of Black Friday wasn’t given until the late 1960s after retailers tried to change the name to Big Friday to discard the negative history, but failing due to the already rising popularity of the name Black Friday. At this time, prices still didn’t change, but as years went on and dark roots of the term were forgotten, retailers began to realize that by offering discounts, they could significantly increase their already good profits by attracting larger crowds.

Over the years, the popularity of the day increased and just last year, in 2015, 74.2 million people went Black Friday shopping. However, students within Louisburg High School don’t seem to be as interested in shopping as the rest of nation, as only about 68 of 150 students surveyed said they would shop this year.

Black Friday has changed much over the years and continues to change now, expanding to Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.


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