The Unexpected Story of Black Friday
Since the 1950s, Black Friday—once known simply as “the day after Thanksgiving”—has evolved into a holiday of sorts in the United States, marked by massive discounts, nonstop shopping, and the occasional act of violence . But recently, Black Friday has also expanded. It’s no longer just a day. It’s a week, a month, an entire state of mind. (By the way, check out Lifehacker’s Black Friday roundup . We’ve got all the deals, baby!)
While pre-dawn trips to the mall are dwindling with the rise of online shopping, Black Friday shopping in brick-and-mortar stores is still a big deal in the U.S.—an estimated 80 million Americans will visit brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday in 2025. But how did Black Friday originate, and what does it mean ?
When was the first Black Friday?
In the United States, the term “Black Friday” originally referred to the onset of the Panic of 1869, when a collapse in gold prices devastated the national economy. The term “Black Friday” as a designation for the day after Thanksgiving emerged in 1951; it was first published in the journal Factory Management and Maintenance, where it referred to the number of employees who missed work on the day after Thanksgiving. Around the same time, police in Philadelphia and Rochester began informally using the term “Black Friday” to describe the traffic jams and crowds that occurred in their cities as shoppers flocked to stores on the day after Thanksgiving. The term gradually caught on. The national press picked up on it in 1975, when The New York Times used the term “Black Friday” specifically to describe the day after Thanksgiving and the sales and shopping that accompanied it.
But even before the event had a name, “Black Friday” existed . The day after Thanksgiving has been known to retailers as the start of the shopping season since the late 1800s. By the early 20th century, retailers organized Thanksgiving Day parades, traditionally ending with an appearance by Santa Claus, as if to say, “Now it’s time to buy Christmas presents.” By an unspoken agreement between retailers, Christmas advertising rarely appeared before Thanksgiving in our grandparents’ time. Clearly, this informal agreement no longer holds true.
Black Friday’s problematic name
Traditionally, a day called “Black Friday” signifies a period of disaster or tragedy, prompting some to propose different names for the day. In the early 1960s, Philadelphia merchants proposed the name “Big Friday,” but it failed to catch on, leaving retailers with the unconvincing explanation that the “black” in “Black Friday” refers to the black ink that represents profits on the ledger. An oft-repeated legend holds that retailers are “in the red” all year and only begin to turn an annual profit at the end of the year, but large retail chains typically make money year-round.
A more modern problem with this name is that Black Friday sales now last for several days or even weeks, starting in early to mid-November and continuing through the following Saturday, Sunday, Cyber Monday, Tuesday, and beyond, leading to questions like, “Want to go Black Friday shopping this Sunday?” So far, alternative names like “Five Days of Madness” and ” The Day I Can Stomp on Someone to Save $8 on a Nespresso Machine ” haven’t caught on. But here’s hoping.
The failure of the “Black Thursday” campaign
Starting around 2010, the insatiable thirst for profit led many retailers to move the start of their Black Friday sales to Thursday (i.e., Thanksgiving). Kmart opened on Thanksgiving morning. Toys R Us opened that same evening. By 2011, Walmart began opening its doors at 10:00 PM on Thursday. This trend sparked widespread discontent: many Americans were outraged that employees were being forced to work on Thanksgiving, or angry that consumerism was encroaching on a holiday meant to commemorate colonialism. By 2021, most major retailers caved and decided to remain closed on Thanksgiving.
Cyber Monday is an accidental offspring of Black Friday.
The term “Cyber Monday” describes the surge in online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving, fueled by employees returning to the office and immediately starting online shopping. The term first appeared on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release titled “Cyber Monday Is Fast Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year,” which is arguably the most influential press release ever written. Since its introduction in the early 2000s, Cyber Monday has become the biggest online shopping day of the year. According to Adobe Analytics, Americans will spend $14.25 billion online on Cyber Monday in 2025. So is Cyber Monday more important than Black Friday? Retailers don’t really care: analysts now tend to lump everything together under the “Black Friday vs. Cyber Monday” (or even “Cyber Week”) umbrella.
“Shopping Free Day” is the complete opposite of “Black Friday”.
If all this naked consumerism disgusts you, you’re not alone. Anti-consumers have dubbed the day after Thanksgiving ” No Shopping Day ,” which can be celebrated by donating to charity, cutting up credit cards, or simply not shopping. First observed in Canada in 1992, the day was coined by artist Ted Dave and popularized by Adbusters magazine .
It’s difficult to assess the success of this alternative holiday. Both online and offline sales have skyrocketed since 1992, suggesting that No Shopping Day has had little impact. On the other hand, perhaps major retailers are losing millions because someone on Bluesky reminded you not to shop. Of course.
How many deaths were caused by Black Friday?
Depending on how you count, between one and 17 people died on Black Friday. Jdimitai Damour is the only person killed directly by Black Friday sales: the 34-year-old worker was trampled to death by a crowd outside a Walmart on Long Island on Black Friday 2008. If you include car accidents, shootings, retail worker suicides, and fatal heart attacks, the Black Friday death toll rises to 17, and the number of injured rises to 128.
Black Friday violence even inspired a horror film: Eli Roth’s 2023 Thanksgiving -themed slasher opens with a hilariously violent Black Friday riot at a major chain store, which sets off a chain of events that results in multiple people being murdered by a man in a pilgrim mask.
Is Black Friday just a hype?
Well, yes, of course. Critics of Black Friday point out that there are arguably better times to buy a new TV (for example, the week before the Super Bowl ), not to mention a host of other items. The savings from Black Friday shopping are often illusory—expensive, “hit” items usually sell out quickly, leaving behind items whose prices generally remain the same as at any other time of year. Some retailers even inflate prices on items before Black Friday to make the discounts appear greater. If you shop online, your browser history, location, and cart contents can influence the prices you see on Black Friday, just as they do on any other day.
Yet, despite the protest holidays, the hassles of shopping in crowded stores, and the frustration of finding deals that are often not very good to begin with, Black Friday stubbornly remains an unofficial holiday, celebrated in one way or another by over 100 million Americans. What this says about our country’s relationship with capitalism is unclear, but personally, I’m going to continue my own tradition the day after Thanksgiving: eating pie for breakfast and thinking about going for a walk, but instead watching The Quick and the Dead . I’m not protesting anything; I just don’t need the hassle.