Black Friday. We all know it, and we all try to take advantage of it, but how did it come to be? Better yet, how did it change throughout the years of it existing? Those are some of the questions I plan on answering today. 

During the early 60s, suburban tourists came to the city of Philadelphia due to the Army-Navy football game that was happening on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. However, since most tourists decided to show up on the Friday before, the police had to deal with all sorts of mayhem and chaos that ensued that day, so much so that they gave that day the name of “Black Friday”. Companies whose sales started to spike because of the tourists also decided to run with the name, eventually giving the name a completely new context behind it.

Since then, “Black Friday” no longer refers to the chaos that usually occurs on that day, but rather refers to companies’ sales going out of the red and into the black, or in other words, from low sales to high. However, between then and now, the meaning isn’t the only thing that changed. Countries like Canada, the UK, South Africa and Australia ended up adopting the holiday as well to try and cash in on all of the money they can receive from it. Finally they ended up stretching the deals given on the holiday to be there after the day as well instead of just being on that single Friday. 

Other than all of that though, I hope everyone takes advantage of Black Friday this year, and I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.