Black Friday is a tradition that falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Black Friday marks the start of the Christmas season and shopping for the winter holiday, but how did this tradition start?
Black Friday originally was known for the terrible day in 1869 when the US saw a dramatic plunge in gold prices, affecting investors throughout the country. But after this event ended, the term “Black Friday” was used in the 1950s by American retail stores.
This term was associated with workforce absence post-Thanksgiving, but then it was reinterpreted by the Philadelphia police force to describe the shopping congestion.
The term was then solidified in the 1980s for stores that shifted from loss to profit, and this marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
Black Friday is most notably known for its violence and sometimes riots that happen because of the determined shoppers. In the article Black Friday (shopping) it explained, in 2011, a woman at a Porter Ranch, California Walmart used pepper spray on fellow shoppers, causing minor injuries to a reported 20 people who had been waiting hours for the store to open. The incident started as shoppers waited in line for the newly discounted Xbox 360. A witness said, “The woman with two children became upset with the way people were pushing in the line for the console”. The witness said, “She pulled out pepper spray and sprayed the other shoppers in line.”.
Black Friday, though not originally a holiday in our society, has turned into a sub-holiday. With drastic sales on items this shopping season, most people would think it would never fall off, but during 2020, many families switched over to online shopping for the Christmas season because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this invertedly caused smaller sales for local and physical stores since they would bring in fewer customers. When asking Cody Foster if he thought that Black Friday has fallen off, he said, “I think so, I believe that they up prices before black fridays so the lower prices look more exponential.”
Even though these sales have been brought down, many people still specifically buy things during Black Friday. Foster commented on whether or not he was going to shop during Black Friday. “Hopefully, and I hope to find some new shoes,” said Foster.
Another individual reflected on the sales aspect of Black Friday. Kimberly Well, a consistent black Friday shopper, said, “Black Friday has gone down lately in sales, but it still beats buying it at full price.”
