History of Black Friday: One Day Only?
Black Friday Sign, Gall & Gall, Holland, photo by Donald Trung Quoc Don. Image: Wikimedia
HISTORY OF BLACK FRIDAY
While it is difficult to connect the term “Black Friday” to the start of the Christmas shopping sales season before its use in the mid-1960s in Philadelphia, the concept appears to go back to the 19th century, when Christmas sales followed Thanksgiving Day parades.
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date of Thanksgiving to the next-to-last Thursday in November rather than the last Thursday of the month, allowing an extra week of shopping before Christmas. In 1941, Congress officially made Thanksgiving the 4th Thursday in November.
The term gained national attention in the early 1980s with the idea that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving.
Procrastinators usually make the shopping days immediately before Christmas the most profitable, but Black Friday is undoubtedly one of the busiest shopping days of the year, or at least it used to be.
In the days before online shopping, people actually visited shopping areas and brick-and-mortar stores to purchase Christmas presents. Now, Black Friday has become Black Friday Week, with Amazon and others launching sales over a week before the actual Black Friday.
Amazon. Image: Amazon.com
The New Shopping Calendar
In our modern era of AI-assisted, web-enabled, GPU-powered online shopping, here is a helpful calendar to keep you informed so you don’t miss important dates:
July – October 31:
- Halloween Shopping Season. Candy and decorations.
November 1:
- Christmas Shopping begins!
- Christmas music begins on the radio and streaming services.
November 2:
- Black Friday Sales are advertised.
November 3:
- Thanksgiving decorations appear, but fewer each year.
- Halloween Jack-o-Lanterns become Harvest Pumpkins.
November 4:
- Halloween Movies end on streaming services.
- The movie “Halloween Ends” was available to stream for 30 days after its October 13, 2022, debut.
November 5:
- Hallmark Christmas Movies begin when a big city girl returns home to her small town, where her cute high school crush, who runs a Christmas Tree farm…
November 22:
- Christmas lights go up.
- Historically, it was Thanksgiving weekend, but now it’s early to mid-November.
- This year, the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony occurs on November 30. The tradition began in 1923 when President Calvin Coolidge lit the first National Christmas Tree at 5 pm.
November 27:
- Traditional Thanksgiving Feast Day.
November 28:
- Traditional Black Friday. Everyone else you know has already been enjoying Black Friday Sales.
December 1:
- “Cyber Monday”, coined by the National Retail Federation in 2005, was last year’s largest online shopping day in US history: $13.2B in online retail sales. This year it’s expected to be $14.2B. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have blended together over time. Amazon was founded in 1994, eBay launched in 1995, and Walmart debuted it’s website in 2000.
December 24:
- Last Minute Christmas Shopping Day by husbands and fathers.
December 25:
December 26:
- Amazon Prime Return Day.
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com
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