Today is the day after Thanksgiving. Better known by its more familiar moniker “Black Friday,” it is, hands down, one of the craziest shopping days of the year for both frugal consumers and spendthrifts alike. Due to the widespread reduced pricing and sales deals made available by most retailers within a short window of time, some even consider the day (albeit controversially) to be a holiday in its own right.
Whether you’re of that school of thought or you shy away from all the materialism and madness of the day entirely, it cannot be denied that Black Friday marks the official start of the holiday shopping season. It’s also spawned additional offshoot spend/save/sales events, such as Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, and Giving Tuesday. But how did the contested (and sometimes detested) craze come about in the first place? The backstory behind the modern meaning of what Black Friday has come to signify in recent decades has surprisingly local roots based in the Mid-Atlantic region, and one city in particular. For this Black Friday Flashback Friday, I’m sharing an overview of what those origins entail and where the story begins.
Earliest Use of the Term
The very first known use of the term “Black Friday” in American History can be traced back to at least one key event of harrowing financial burden. That date was on Friday, September 24, 1869. The news that “blackened” the day was the unfortunate decline in gold prices throughout the United States, which affected investors on a large, universal scale. Similarly, and perhaps more familiarly, was the term “Black Monday,” which came about much later, in 1929, and signified the start of the Great Depression.
On both accounts, it can be summarized that the term “black” in association with a particular time and date has historically been known to describe financial wreck and ruination on a large scale. But as modern connotations now attest, that is no longer the case regarding our modern concept of Black Friday.
A Philly Thing
Philadelphia, by no means, was the birthplace of Black Friday sales. It was, however, the first city to coin the term to describe such an event. It came about in the 1950s and 1960s, when traffic police in the City of Brotherly Love started applying the term “Black Friday” to refer to the holiday shopping-related traffic jams and sidewalk congestion so characteristic of the day after Thanksgiving.
While the term stuck, not all sales merchants were in favor of its “black” association, especially when considering its previous, historical implications. Therefore, some attempts were made at rebranding the post-Thanksgiving shopping weekend as “Big Friday” and “Big Saturday.” But these terms were quickly forgotten. For better or worse, though, these terms did not stick.
A Shopping Evolution Emerges
By the late 1980s, the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping craze became somewhat of a win-win for both retailers and those looking to get their holiday shopping taken care of. Stores began to rely on customers, specifically counting on this day as a vital commerce opportunity. In return, the demand for the ongoing shopping craze was fueled by offering special, temporary deals and discounts.
At last, the bleakness of the word “black” in the event descriptor was not so negative. Instead, it was used to refer to getting out of the red and into the black via all the profits such shopping opportunities, if made available, would garner.
Mid-Atlantic Mainstream
Again, Philadelphia can’t tout an exclusive claim for being the first to offer Black Friday deals, but it was the birthplace of the modern terminology associated with the date. As such, the Mid-Atlantic region boasts several major cities and contested commerce venues that do quite well each year on Black Friday.
The DMV in particular is home to many famed locations, from the District of Columbia to Baltimore, major cities throughout Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and even Delaware. We also have many revolutionary and novel small business locations of great acclaim. Therefore, Black Friday prominence in the Mid-Atlantic can neither be denied nor discounted.