Have you ever wondered, how did Black Friday get its name? The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States, where businesses and merchants provide shoppers with amazing discounts and deals. Love it or loath it, Black Friday is here to stay; but did you know why it is called “Black Friday?”
The Origins of Black Friday
When you hear the phrase Black Friday, then you automatically think of millions of shoppers heading to their nearest mall or department store to save money and shop on the day after Thanksgiving. Many trace the origins of Black Friday to the 1950s when a ton of workers started calling in sick on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It wasn’t to go shopping necessarily, but to have a four day weekend (and recover from the Thanksgiving festivities, no doubt). Every year more and more employers started getting more and more employees calling in sick. It became such a habit that businesses just gave in and started giving all their employees the Friday off with pay rather than dealing with half of their employees just not coming into work.
Another theory suggests that police officers started to use the ‘Black Friday’ term in the ’60s. Police officers said that the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving had more people and car traffic than any other time of the year. The public would have these days off, so they would head downtown to start their Christmas shopping, and this is when the Black Friday tradition took effect.
A popular explanation of the term Black Friday is that it was the time of the year when bookkeepers started to see an increase in profits after Thanksgiving. Profits would soar around Thanksgiving, which would mean that businesses would finally come “out of the red” using black ink to document their sales figures. Soon, more and more businesses caught on to the idea and started to take advantage of this day, adding more sales and discounts to attract more shoppers to their business.
No one really knows the true answer to how and when the term ‘Black Friday’ came into play, nevertheless, today Black Friday is known throughout the United States and around the world for the best discounts and offers. Black Friday provides shoppers with amazing deals and prices that you just don’t find at other times of the year. This is why many people head out on the craziest day of the year for their Christmas shopping.
So now that you know the answer to “how did Black Friday get its name”, why not save your feet and your stress levels this year and spend Black Friday at home on your computer booking a trendy vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, taking advantage of Hotel Mousai’s Black Friday offer.
