Black Friday
Also known as: Black Friday
Black Friday is the day after the U.S. national holiday Thanksgiving Day. It is considered the kickoff of the period to shop for Christmas.
On the fourth Thursday in November, people in the United States and Canada show their gratitude for the harvest and other valuable things in life. To give large families scattered across the country a chance to be together on Thanksgiving Day, many working people have the Friday after Thanksgiving Day off. This creates a long weekend of four days off.
The tradition of doing Christmas shopping on Black Friday has been fueled by the fact that stores, especially large department stores, stunt massive discounts on their products on this day. Their goal is to attract as many customers as possible. Sometimes the sale is also meant to make room for new assortments aimed at Christmas.
The day is the perfect opportunity to score bargains for Christmas. Often these are one-time offers for which there is limited stock. Customers are forced both by the timeliness of the promotions and the crowds in stores to decide quickly and make their move.
Not infrequently, Black Friday causes traffic congestion and parking problems around shopping centers. To respond to this interest, many stores operate modified opening hours. Some businesses even open at night.
Black Friday
In recent years, the phenomenon of Black Friday has also been on the rise in the Netherlands and Belgium. Retail chains try to attract extra customers to their stores by adopting this phenomenon. There is more and more advertising with offers that only apply on Black Friday (and sometimes the following weekend).
Except for the Christmas season, Black Friday is mostly about buying gifts for St. Nicholas. Black Friday is the ideal day to score inexpensive gifts for Saint Nicholas Eve.
Where did the name Black Friday come from?
The term Black Friday seems to have been first officially used in the 1950s by Philadelphia police because of traffic jams caused by shoppers. There are several theories about the exact origin of the name.
One explanation is that many retailers would write black figures for the first time on Black Friday, or, in other words, that sales made up to that point in that year would exceed costs incurred. While the day is indeed important for the outcome of Christmas sales, and in many accounts losses are often written down in red and positives in black, the accuracy of this theory is somewhat debatable.
