A Complete History Of Black Friday

Black Friday shopping has become vital to retailers big and small throughout the U.S. Giants including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE:WMT) roll out sales and deals early to entice shoppers. So, let’s look at what to expect from Black Friday this year and dive into the history of both the shopping holiday extravaganza and the phrase.

2018

The National Retail Federation predicts that holiday retail sales will jump as much as 4.8% to reach $720.89 billion in 2018. We should note that this comes after last year’s holiday retail sales popped 5.3% to hit $687.87 billion.

The NRF also recently announced that 164 million people plan to go shopping during the five-day Thanksgiving shopping holiday weekend that includes Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and the American Express (NYSE:AXP) -backed Small Business Saturday. Out of the five days, Black Friday is projected to be the busiest, followed by Cyber Monday.

U.S. consumer confidence rose in October to an almost two-decade high, which is part of the reason that many expect a strong showing from retailers this season. Yet, the recent market downturn hurt Macy’s (NYSE:M) and Walmart stock despite strong quarterly performances. Target (NYSE:TGT) , on the other hand, posted an earnings miss Tuesday that helped send its shares down over 10%.

Now it’s time to dive into the history of Black Friday.

1860s Gold Crisis

Black Friday, as its name might suggest, originally marked an awful day for the U.S. economy. The phrase initially referred to the day the American gold market crashed on September 24, 1869.

As the story goes, two Wall Street financial speculators, Jim Fisk and Jay Gould, bought up as much gold as they could in hopes of driving up U.S. gold prices and selling their positions at a massive profit.

When things got out of hand, President Ulysses S. Grant decided to have the U.S. Treasury sell $4 million worth of gold on the next trading day. News circulated quickly, which caused Wall Street and the stock market to tumble. “Possibly no avalanche ever swept with more terrible violence,” the New York Herald later wrote about the day that would become known as Black Friday.

In ‘the Black’

Early 20^th century holiday shopping trends helped shape the modern use of the term Black Friday. The idea and phrase stems from the basic terms that businesses use to mark profitability. Black meant retailers and companies were finally going to get into “the black,” or turn a profit when shoppers began their holiday spending. Still, this is not the real genesis of what we mean by Black Friday today.

Upset Police

The modern phrase related to this day of frenzied shopping seems to trace back to upset police officers. Starting in the 1950s, Philadelphia police began to refer to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, and their reasoning was clear.

The department came to dread the influx of suburban shoppers that flooded the city, as well as the tourists who began arriving for the Army-Navy football game, which was often played in the city. Philadelphia police officers resented the long hours and increased congestion the day after Thanksgiving.

The phrase quickly caught fire in the area, with retail stores trying unsuccessfully to flip the phrase into a happy term meant to encourage shoppers to come in on the days following Thanksgiving.

Modern Black Friday

There was no official start to the current trend of discounts and hype, but most place it sometime near the tail end of the 1980s, when retailers found a way to rebrand the phrase into a sales-producing positive.

Since then, Black Friday has morphed into something insane. Deals now start before Thanksgiving and run all the way through Cyber Monday. The shopping holiday has even spread to the UK and places that do not celebrate Thanksgiving.

However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s, after years of marketing, that Black Friday overtook the Friday before Christmas as the most popular shopping day of the year.

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