A Slightly Depressing Story of Black Friday
Black Friday, once known simply as “the day after Thanksgiving,” has become a holiday of sorts in the United States, marked by consumer discounts, nonstop shopping, and occasional violence .
Black Friday has grown and metastasized so much that it is no longer just a day: it is a week, a month, a real state of mind. (By the way, check out Lifehacker’s Black Friday coverage . We’ve got all the deals, baby!) While waking up early and shopping in brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday is on the wane as online shopping increases, it’s still a big deal in the US – it During Black Friday 2023, an estimated 90 million Americans shopped online and 76.2 million Americans visited brick-and-mortar stores .
But this is now. How did Black Friday start? What does all this mean ?
When was the first Black Friday?
Black Friday in the United States originally referred to the beginning of the Panic of 1869, when the collapse of gold prices devastated the national economy. “Black Friday” as a description of the post-Thanksgiving shopping day dates back to 1951: The term first appeared in Factory Management and Maintenance magazine and refers to the number of employees who miss work the day after Thanksgiving. Around the same time, police in Philadelphia and Rochester began informally using “Black Friday” to describe the traffic jams and crowds that appeared in their cities as shoppers entered stores the day after Thanksgiving.
The phrase gradually caught on—it was picked up by the national press in 1975, when the New York Times used the phrase to describe the day after Thanksgiving and the shopping and sales it brings.
But Black Friday existed before it even had a name. The day after Thanksgiving has been known to merchants as the start of the shopping season since the late 1800s. Then and into the 20th century, retailers often sponsored Thanksgiving Day parades, which traditionally ended with Santa Claus appearing as if to say, “Now it’s time to do your Christmas shopping.” By unspoken agreement among retailers, Christmas-themed advertisements rarely appeared until Thanksgiving, our grandparents’ day. This unofficial deal is obviously no longer applicable.
The problematic name of “Black Friday”
Calling a day “black” traditionally signifies a period of disaster or tragedy, leading some to propose different names for the day. In the early 1960s, Philadelphia merchants proposed the name “Big Friday,” which did not catch on, leaving retailers with the weak explanation that the word “black” in Black Friday referred to the black ink representing profit on the ledger (as if they didn’t I don’t earn any money for the rest of the year). Often repeated information suggests that retailers are in the red all year and only start making annual profits at the end of the year, but that’s not actually how accounting works – large retailers typically report their profits to investors. every quarter.
A more modern problem with the name is that Black Friday sales now last for days or even weeks, starting in early to mid-November and flowing into the following Saturday, Sunday, Cyber Monday, Tuesday and beyond, prompting people to say something something like, “Do you want to go Black Friday shopping this Sunday?” Alternative titles such as “Five Day Madness” and ” The Day I Get to Stomp on Someone to Save $8 on Nespresso ” did not catch on. But there is hope here.
Black Thursday failure
The insatiable thirst for profit previously led many retailers to try to push the start of physical Black Friday shopping to Thursday (aka Thanksgiving). Beginning around 2011, some major retailers—Kmart, Toys R Us and others that have remained in business since—began opening on Thanksgiving.
The trend never caught on, with many shoppers appalled that employees were forced to work on Thanksgiving or angry that consumerism was intruding on a holiday meant to celebrate colonialism. By 2021, most major retailers agreed and remained closed on Thanksgiving.
Cyber Monday is the bastard child of Black Friday
The term “Cyber Monday” describes the surge in online retail sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving as workers returned to the office and immediately began shopping online. The term first appeared on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled “Cyber Monday is quickly becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.” This may be the most influential press release ever written.
“Buy nothing” is the downside of Black Friday.
Anti-consumers have dubbed the day after Thanksgiving ” Buy Nothing Day”, a day that can be celebrated by doing charity or simply not buying anything. Buy Nothing Day was first celebrated by artist Ted Dave for AdBusters magazine in Canada in 1992. .
It is difficult to measure the success of alternative holidays. Since 1992, both online and brick-and-mortar retail sales have increased sharply, suggesting that the Buy Nothing Day effect is negligible. On the other hand, it’s possible that big retailers are making millions less than they would have if someone at Bluesky hadn’t reminded you not to go shopping every Black Friday. Certainly.
How many people did Black Friday kill?
Depending on how you measure it, between 1 and 17 people have died on Black Friday since 2010. Jdimitai Damour is the only person killed directly as a result of a Black Friday sale: a 34-year-old salesman was trampled to death by a mob at a Walmart on Long Island on Black Friday in 2008. When you factor in car crashes, shootings, retail worker suicides and fatal heart attacks, the Black Friday balloon death toll rises to 17, with 125 reporting injuries.
Black Friday violence has even inspired a horror movie: Eli Roth’s 2023 holiday slasher Thanksgiving opens with a hilariously violent Black Friday riot that inspires two of its victims to hatch a brutal revenge plan with a turkey the following year.
Is Black Friday a giant scam?
Critics of Black Friday point out that there is actually a better time to buy a new TV (the week before the Super Bowl ) and other items, and that savings from Black Friday purchases are often largely illusory—high-priced “windshield wiper” products are usually sell out quickly, leaving behind items that are essentially the same price as any other time of year.
Black Friday triumphs
Despite protest holidays, the hassle of shopping when stores are crowded, and the frustration of searching for deals that often don’t exist, Black Friday remains an unofficial holiday that more than 100 million Americans celebrate in one way or another. What this says about our country and its relationship with capitalism is unclear. Personally, I’m going to continue my post-Thanksgiving tradition of eating pie for breakfast and thinking about going out, but playing video games instead.