What started Black Friday: the story of the legendary sale

Black Friday-a traditional American post-Thanksgiving sale that causes a lot of excitement — has a long history. First they called it the collapse of the gold market, a hundred years later-terrible traffic jams in the United States. Pennsylvania. When did Friday turn black in the usual sense of the word?

For more than a century, American retail chains have stepped up their marketing attack and increased discounts after Thanksgiving, especially on Friday, which has become widely known as Black Friday.

But the term "Black Friday" in reference to the sale after Thanksgiving is applied relatively recently, and it seems that it went from Pennsylvania. Here's how it happened.

For many years, the phrase "Black Friday" referred to the collapse of the gold market on September 24, 1869. The term was used for other stock market crises on Wall Street in the following years. This clipping is from the New York Herald for November 1871, and describes the lawsuits against the speculators Jay Gould and Jim Fisk.

The stock market crisis even formed the basis of a dramatic work, and a "social play" was created, as mentioned in this clipping from the 1872 issue of The Daily Picayune, published in New Orleans.

In fact, this is an old version of the movie "The Game of Short".

"Black Friday" also referred to any Friday, the 13th. In 1923, there were two of them. This is stated in this article from The Springfield Daily Leader for January 4, 1923, published in Springfield, Missouri.

After-Thanksgiving sales have always been popular. They just didn't have a name.

This is an advertisement from an 1894 newspaper published in Lima, Ohio. It offers trendy clothing patterns for just $ 8.88 as a sale on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

In 1923, the store in Pennsylvania advertised its "Annual Post-Thanksgiving Sale" and " drastic discounts on coats and dresses."

In March 1970, when before Thanksgiving was about eight months away, the store in Pennsylvania held a "Black Friday Sale", referring to Friday, March 13th.

In 1973, Black Friday was still not associated with Thanksgiving in any way — at least, as this newspaper clipping shows, not in the United States. Kingsport, Tennessee.

But wait! In 1975, an article in a Pennsylvania newspaper reported that taxi and bus drivers in major cities referred to the hectic day after Thanksgiving as "Black Friday," which marks the start of Christmas shopping and the " mad pursuit of Christmas presents." This is stated in an article from The Morning Herald, published in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on December 5, 1975.

The New York Times responded the same year, writing that police and bus drivers in Philadelphia had a tough time on "the day of the biggest shopping and the biggest traffic congestion of the year." The press secretary of the municipal authorities noted that such a negative trend began in 1961.

General Manager of the shopping center in Pennsylvania in 1977 proposed an alternative, telling the local Delaware County Daily Times: "Instead of Black Friday, you can call it Green Friday."“... Things are going great."

But this term was not known throughout the country. In 1980, the Associated Press news agency quoted a department store employee as saying that the busy day after Thanksgiving for retail chains was "definitely not Black Friday" — in a good way. This article appeared in the November 29, 1980 issue of the San Bernardino County Sun, a California newspaper.

In the 1980s, Pennsylvania newspapers began to regularly refer to the day after Thanksgiving as "Black Friday", possibly in connection with traffic jams.

This is a 1989 clipping from the Standard-Speaker newspaper in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. Black Friday was still not associated with something good and pleasant.

Even in this 1989 Associated Press article that mentions Black Friday, the author notes that she is from Philadelphia, where the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday "because of the crowds and outrageous congestion in shopping malls and parking lots."

In 1995, an article in the Standard-Speaker newspaper stated that "no one really knows" why Black Friday is so called. There is a quote from a long-time employee of the newspaper, who suggested that the shops on this day finish work after dark. The quick-thinking employee was Andy Rasnock of Beaver Meadows, Pennsylvania.

In 1996, another newspaper from The Pennsylvania, Indiana Gazette, wrote about Black Friday more specifically, noting that it is the only day when the books of retail businesses will definitely be black with entries.

The New York Times in the same year consolidated the meaning of the phrase, writing that Black Friday got its name "because merchants hope that heavy trade will manifest itself in black ink on their balance sheets."

Since then, this thought has often been repeated.

Here's a note from the Associated Press: "The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because, according to tradition, this day turns out to be a busy one for retail businesses due to the wave of holiday shopping that can increase store profits."

And here is a note from the Wall Street Journal for 2012. It says that Black Friday is not a day when stores make a profit comparable to an annual one, and that merchants must fight not to be left in the red because of this sale.

Most major retail chains start their Black Friday sales directly on Thanksgiving Day, that is, on Thursday, although there are exceptions. The start time has shifted so much that in some cases they open for sale at midnight before Thanksgiving, as they did in 2011.

In Russia, too, there is a Black Friday. The big sale in online stores starts on Thursday, and most stores have a sale on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Happy shopping!