A Brief History Of Black Friday
Origins
After Macy’s started holding its annual Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the day after Thanksgiving was cemented as the official kickoff of “Christmastime,” and thus, Christmas shopping season. As such, the term “Black Friday” was coined not because the day itself inherently sinister and evil (though it may be!), but because it marked the season when retailers moved from the red into the black. That’s some real inside baseball, there.
It was always a little sinister, though, because reports also exist of Philadelphia police using “Black Friday” and “Black Saturday” to refer to the inevitable, exhausting, and difficult to manage post-Thanksgiving surge in shopper traffic. A concerned PR executive tried to change it to “Big Friday” and “Big Saturday” in 1961, but as we all know, it didn’t really take.