# Black Friday? WTF? Where did that name come from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 29, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923 "2008-11-29T14:42:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/1 "2008-11-29T14:42:14Z")
I think I’ve heard of a Black Friday in relation to crashing stock prices, but maybe that was a Monday, or Wednesday, I can’t recall. I had never, before this year, heard the Friday after Thanksgiving referred to as “Black Friday”. I’ve asked some other folks too and none of them have either. All the sudden it’s everywhere, and used by everyone. Is Madison in some kind of information vaccuum bubble? Have I been sleepwalking for the last few years? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/2 "2008-11-29T14:45:13Z")
The term’s been around for ages. It’s so called because it commonly marks the point where retail businesses begin to show a profit for the year (in the black). ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/3 "2008-11-29T15:00:50Z")
This link may be of interest: > **[Black Friday (shopping)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%28shopping%29#Origin_of_the_name_.22Black_Friday.22)** > > Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season and is the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at heavily discounted prices and often open early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving. Some stores' sales continue to Monday ("Cyber Monday") or for a week ("Cyber Week"). > "Black Friday" has evolved in meaning and impact over the years, ini... > [@](#): > > The earliest uses of “Black Friday” come from or reference Philadelphia and refer to the heavy traffic on that day, an implicit comparison to the extremely stressful and chaotic experience of Black Tuesday (the 1929 stock-market crash). The earliest known reference to “Black Friday” (in this sense), found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect Society, refers to Black Friday 1965 and makes the Philadelphia origin explicit: > > JANUARY 1966 – “Black Friday” is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. “Black Friday” officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/4 "2008-11-29T15:05:13Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Is Madison in some kind of information vaccuum bubble? > > Have I been sleepwalking for the last few years? Apparently. We quite literally answer this question every single year around Thanksgiving. You aren’t even the first thread asking about Black Friday this year. > **[When did the day after Thanksgiving become "Black Friday"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=494859)** > > I feel like I’ve just woken up after a few years of sleep. Seemingly all of the sudden (to me, anyway), everyone calls the Friday after Thanksgiving “Black Friday”. I could swear I never heard it called that last year. I know it’s always been the... ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/5 "2008-11-29T15:48:00Z")
> [@Q.E.D](#): > > The term’s been around for ages. It’s so called because it commonly marks the point where retail businesses begin to show a profit for the year (in the black). A cite would be needed. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/6 "2008-11-29T15:51:12Z")
> [@sailor](#): > > A cite would be needed. You could try the links which have already been provided. From the first one: > [@](#): > > Many merchants objected to the use of a negative term to refer to one of the most important shopping days in the year.[8] By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: 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. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/7 "2008-11-29T17:28:22Z")
Except that Wikipedia shows the origin of the term is earlier, 1966, and your own cite says that is not the true origin but a cosmetic “alternative theory” made up to avoid the negative image the name conveys. Not to mention that I do not believe for a second that “retailers operated at a loss from January to the end of November”. That is plain nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/8 "2008-11-29T17:30:45Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I think I’ve heard of a Black Friday in relation to crashing stock prices, but maybe that was a Monday, or Wednesday, I can’t recall. I had never, before this year, heard the Friday after Thanksgiving referred to as “Black Friday”. I’ve asked some other folks too and none of them have either. > > All the sudden it’s everywhere, and used by everyone. > > Is Madison in some kind of information vaccuum bubble? > > Have I been sleepwalking for the last few years? If it makes you feel any better, I was asking a buddy of mine the same question today. I really don’t remember hearing the term applied to the Friday after Thanksgiving. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/9 "2008-11-29T17:45:11Z")
Yeah, I wouldn’t really believe that the early 80s counts as “ages”. One age, maybe 😉 OTOH, I can readily believe that many if not most retailers don’t show a profit until around Black Friday since the profit margins in many sectors are pretty tiny. Even with raw profit margins of 50% on items, which is high for retailers overall, overhead will eat into that pretty quickly. That’s without accounting. I don’t know how retail accounting works but if you look at it as if your expenses for stocking up for the holidays were costed before the holidays only to be recouped during them I think it’s safe to say that that nearly all retailers that are dependent on the holidays would fall under that criteria, even if they might have shown a profit before Black Friday had they not stocked up in anticipation of the holidays. In one way of looking at it that’s not really fair. But, while I also plead ignorance as to the tendency of financial arrangements between supplier and stores, if wholesalers demand cash rather than extend credit, then that accounting point of view is totally legit from a free cash flow perspective. Most holiday-dependent retailers cash flow will be tighter before the holidays. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/10 "2008-11-29T18:00:32Z")
While is may have been used from time to time for a long time, I had never heard the term used commonly until the 1980s or later. And I grew up in retail and worked in retail business up until 1980. My father never had to depend on that day to make a profit, either, nor did Spencer Gifts in the 70s. It was just the start of the Christmas shopping season and at some point the term – which may have been used in a few limited cases – became the general one. (It’s also not the busiest shopping day of the year.) But it’s like “Internet Monday” – a term that was coined and which pretended to have some actual relevance to the day. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/11 "2008-11-29T18:27:02Z")
The funny thing is, until a few years ago it’s a term I only heard among other retail workers (when I worked retail.) And it was definitely used more in the sense of “It’s the most suckiest day of the year!” than “Back in black!” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2008, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/black-friday-wtf-where-did-that-name-come-from/474923/12 "2008-11-29T20:18:02Z")
A 2006 [Black Friday](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=397469) thread. And a 2002 thread, [“Black Friday”: How long has it been called that?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=147023), featuring some of Tammi Terrell’s earliest etymological detective work.