Black Friday (shopping)

Black
Friday is
the
day
following Thanksgiving Day in the
United States (the fourth Thursday
of November). Since 1932, it has
been regarded as the beginning of
the Christmas shopping season in
the U.S., and most major retailers
open very early (and more recently
during overnight hours) and offer
promotional sales. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but
California and some other states observe "The Day After
Thanksgiving" as a holiday for state government employees,
sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus
Day. Many non-retail employees and schools have both
Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along with the
following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby
increasing the number of potential shoppers. It has routinely been
the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005, although news
reports, which at that time were inaccurate, have described it as the
busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of
time. Similar stories resurface year upon year at this time,
portraying hysteria and shortage of stock, creating a state of positive
feedback.
In 2014, spending volume on Black Friday fell for the first time since
the 2008 recession. $50.9 billion was spent during the 4-day Black
Friday weekend, down 11% from the previous year. However, the
U.S. economy was not in a recession. Christmas creep has been cited
as a factor in the diminishing importance of Black Friday, as many
retailers now spread out their promotions over the entire months of
November and December rather than concentrate them on a single
shopping day or weekend.
The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday applied to the day
after Thanksgiving in a shopping context suggests that the term
originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy
and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the
day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961. More than

twenty years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular

explanation became that this day represented the point in the year
when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being "in the
red" to being "in the black".