Black Friday or Black Friday in the past few years has become a popular phenomenon of the consumer and shopping industry. Originating in the United States, this day has spread around the world and has become one of the most anticipated promotional/discount events of the year in many countries.
Black Friday usually happens on the first Friday after Thanksgiving (the 4th Thursday of November in the United States). This is also considered the opening day of the US Christmas shopping season – one of the times when people’s spending is at the highest level of the year.
Why is it called Black Friday?
Many people explain that the name Black Friday originates from the fact that after Thanksgiving, stores will start trading, make a profit and show a “black” balance in their bank accounts (in the old days in the US, Accountants usually use red ink to mark debits and black ink to mark credits). Even American English has its own idiom for this phenomenon, “in the black”.
The truth, however, is that the origins of Black Friday are a bit darker.
According to Ben Zimmer, Language columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Black Friday is a phrase that has been around for a long time to refer in general to negative events that occurred on Friday.
One of the first times the phrase was used was as far back as 1869. “Back then there was a pair of investors named Jay Gould and James Fisk. They speculated and manipulated the gold market, causing a scandal. financial crisis and the day it happened has been called Black Friday,” Ben explained.
There is no solid evidence as to who first coined this phrase or whether it was used for the day immediately after Thanksgiving in the US, but it may have originated in the 50s of the last century. .
But even then, when it was more than 80 years old, the phrase had nothing to do with procurement, but simply referred to the absence of workers at factories when they decided to leave work on this day to take a break from Thanksgiving Thursday through the weekend. A short time later, the phrase began to be used by the police to refer to the busiest shopping day of the year that occurred right after Thanksgiving and right before the annual football game between the West Academy team Point and the United States Naval Academy.
The scene of jostling to buy goods on this day once made the US police “haunted”.
At that time, Black Friday still had a negative meaning when the police thought that they had to work too hard to deal with traffic, congestion and ensure security at this time.
It was not until the late 1980s that the phrase became synonymous with retail and promotional events. Not wanting to keep its former negative connotation and wanting to utilize the name for promotional campaigns, retailers began to “reinvent” the phrase in the sense of the credit balance mentioned above. From this point on, Black Friday is associated with the meaning that stores begin to make a profit.
Thanks to the non-stop advertising and promotion campaigns of retailers over the years, this meaning has become commonplace to this day and has become an integral part of the consumer, shopping industry. , similar to Cyber Monday or Small Business Saturday.
Versions similar to Black Friday
Black Friday is not the only occasion when consumers see deep discounts on many different items to stimulate demand. As shopping and especially online channels grow, more and more days are used by businesses for the purpose of increasing sales. Some of them are:
Boxing Day, or Day After Christmas (the day after Christmas), usually takes place on December 26 every year. This day is more popular in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and European countries and is also considered the biggest sale of the year equivalent to Black Friday in these countries.
Cyber Monday: A spin-off of Black Friday, the Monday following Thanksgiving and often used by online sellers to boost sales.
Online shopping also has its own day to advertise – called Cyber Monday.
Small Business Saturday (Small Business Saturday): Slightly different from the rest, this day comes right after Black Friday and is an annual occasion for consumers to support local small businesses to promote encourage them during the shopping season.