Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the
United States, often regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping
season. In recent years, most major retailers have opened extremely early and
offered promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season, similar to
Boxing Day sales in many Commonwealth Nations. Black Friday is not a federal
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 day after off, followed by a
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.
The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it
originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle
traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. Use of the term
started before 1961 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around
1975. Later an alternative explanation was made: that retailers traditionally
operated at a financial loss ("in the red") from January through
November, and "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers
begin to turn a profit, or "in the black".For large retail chains
like Walmart, their net income is positive starting from January 1, and Black
Friday can boost their year to date net profit from $14 billion to $19 billion.
For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6:00
a.m., but in the late 2000s many had crept to 5:00 or even 4:00. This was taken
to a new extreme in 2011, when several retailers (including Target, Kohl's,
Macy's, Best Buy, and Bealls) opened at midnight for the first time. In 2012, Walmart
and several other retailers announced that they would open most of their stores
at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day (except in states where opening on
Thanksgiving is prohibited due to blue laws, such as Massachusetts where they
still opened around midnight), prompting calls for a walkout among some
workers. Black Friday shopping is known for attracting aggressive crowds, with
annual reports of assaults, shootings, and throngs of people trampling on other
shoppers in an attempt to get the best deal on a product before supplies run
out.
The states which have official public holidays for state
government employees on "The Day After Thanksgiving" include
California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky,
Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New
Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and
West Virginia.
The news media have long described the day after Thanksgiving
as the busiest shopping day of the year. In earlier years, this was not
actually the case. In the period from 1993 through 2001, for example, Black
Friday ranked from fifth to tenth on the list of busiest shopping days, with
the last Saturday before Christmas usually taking first place.In 2003, however,
Black Friday actually was the busiest shopping day of the year, and it has
retained that position every year since, with the exception of 2004, when it
ranked second (after Saturday, December 18).
Black Friday is popular as a shopping day for a combination
of reasons. As the first day after the last major holiday before Christmas it
marks the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season. Additionally, many
employers give their employees the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday
weekend. In order to take advantage of this, virtually all retailers in the
country, big and small, offer various sales. Recent years have seen retailers
extend beyond normal hours in order to maintain an edge, or to simply keep up
with the competition. Such hours may include opening as early as 12:00 am or
remaining open overnight on Thanksgiving Day and beginning sale prices at
midnight. In 2010, Toys 'R' Us began their Black Friday sales at 10:00 pm on
Thanksgiving Day and further upped the ante by offering free boxes of Crayola
crayons and coloring books for as long as supplies lasted. Other retailers,
like Sears, Aéropostale, and Kmart, began Black Friday sales early Thanksgiving
morning, and ran them through as late as 11:00 pm Friday evening. Forever 21
went in the opposite direction, opening at normal hours on Friday, and running
late sales until 2:00 am Saturday morning. Historically, it was common for
Black Friday sales to extend throughout the following weekend. However, this
practice has largely disappeared in recent years, perhaps because of an effort
by retailers to create a greater sense of urgency.
The news media usually give heavy play to reports of Black
Friday shopping and their implications for the commercial success of the
Christmas shopping season, but the relationship between Black Friday sales and
retail sales for the full holiday season is quite weak and may even be
negative.
History
That the day after Thanksgiving is the "official"
start of the holiday shopping season may be linked together with the idea of
Santa Claus parades. Parades celebrating Thanksgiving often include an
appearance by Santa at the end of the parade, with the idea that 'Santa has
arrived' or 'Santa is just around the corner' because Christmas is always the
next major holiday following Thanksgiving.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Santa or
Thanksgiving Day parades were sponsored by department stores. These include the
Toronto Santa Claus Parade, in Canada, sponsored by Eaton's, and the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade sponsored by Macy's. Department stores would use the
parades to launch a big advertising push. Eventually it just became an
unwritten rule that no store would try doing Christmas advertising before the parade
was over. Therefore, the day after Thanksgiving became the day when the
shopping season officially started.
Later on, the fact that this marked the official start of
the shopping season led to controversy. In 1939, retail shops would have liked
to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition
and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt moved the date for Thanksgiving one week earlier, leading to much
anger by the public who wound up having to change holiday plans. Some even
refused the change, resulting in the U.S. citizens celebrating Thanksgiving on
two separate days. Some started referring to the change as Franksgiving.
