How Did Black Friday Develop

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has evolved into a shopping day not only pervasive in the United States, but even other countries, which do not celebrate Thanksgiving, still using that day as their start of the holiday shopping season. While the growth of online shopping has transformed its significance, with now shopping deals online extending before and after Black Friday, Black Friday is still seen as the general beginning of the holiday season for many.

Origin of Black Friday

Black Friday may have its origins from the late 19th century and early 20th century, when department stores across the United States began to become not only larger but also more competitive. These department stores, such as Macy's or Lord and Taylor, held annual Christmas parades on the day after Thanksgiving. Many people took the day after Thanksgiving off, creating a type of free holiday. Department stores took advantage of this by promoting their brand and sponsoring large parades. Usually these parades were advertising oriented to promote the new products for sale that year or offer discounts on given shopping items in the lead up to Christmas. Usually, department stores and other retailers did not advertise their Christmas items for sale until after Thanksgiving. The department stores, as they grew in influence, began to set a trend in using the day after Thanksgiving as the launch of the Christmas shopping season. As more and more stores adopted the trend sent by the department stores, people generally began to see the Friday after Thanksgiving as a time when deals and sales might be offered to entice them over rival shopping competitors. For decades, however, the Friday after Thanksgiving was widely known as the beginning of the shopping season for Christmas but no reference existed for that day.

It is not clear what led to or when the term "Black Friday" came into existence in reference to the day after Thanksgiving. Most likely, in Philadelphia during the late 1950s or early 1960s, increased shopping traffic and pedestrian traffic getting to stores led to more frequent traffic jams and accidents. People also saw this as disruptive, particularly people who did not take part in the shopping. The term may have begun as a pejorative for the disruption but soon shoppers themselves or at least the media began to use the term more frequently by the early 1960s. Since the 1960s until the late 1990s, Black Friday remained relatively similar, with stores traditionally offering discounts and sales. However, some stores began to try to gain initial advantages by moving Black Friday sales earlier or even open very early on Black Friday at around midnight or even early in the morning.