When I think of Black Friday, I imagine the classic Christmas ‘chick-flick’ where the shoppers punch each other in the face, ponytails are pulled and someone is attacked with a stiletto over a cardigan. And, listening to the stories of last year’s Black Friday in South Africa, I think we are well on our way.
Actually, the term ‘Black Friday’ was first used during a financial crisis – the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday’, the conspiracy finally unravelled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.
The true story behind Black Friday, however, is not as sunny as retailers would have you believe. In the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city ahead of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would the cops not be able to take the day off, they would have to work extra-long shifts to deal with the additional crowds and traffic. Shoplifters would also take advantage of the bedlam in stores to make off with merchandise, adding to the law enforcement headache.
Over the next two decades, the phrase became more widespread and, by 1961, ‘Black Friday’ was so common in Philadelphia that the city’s merchants and boosters tried unsuccessfully to change it to ‘Big Friday’ in order to move away from the negative connotations.
The term never spread to the rest of the country until much later and wasn’t in common use nationwide until the late 1980s, By then, the retailers had found a way to reinvent Black Friday and make it something that reflected positively on them and their customers. The result was the popular explanation 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’. The day after Thanksgiving marked the occasion when America’s stores finally turned a profit. (In fact, stores traditionally see bigger sales on the Saturday before Christmas.) Since then, the one-day sales’ bonanza has morphed into a four-day event and spawned other ‘retail holidays’ like Small Business Saturday/Sunday and Cyber Monday. Stores started opening earlier and earlier on that Friday, and now the most dedicated shoppers can head out right after their Thanksgiving meal.
Since 2006, there have been seven reported deaths and 98 injuries throughout the United States. It is common for prospective shoppers to camp out over the Thanksgiving holiday in an effort to secure a place in front of the line and thus a better chance of getting desired items. This poses a significant safety risk in the blocking of emergency access and fire lanes, causing at least one city to ban the practice.