Great offers and discounts, a whole week of shopping events and many people who chase the best deals — it’s Black Friday! But where exactly does this shopping holiday come from? What is its history? Moreover, why do we even call it “Black Friday“?
Black Friday comes from the U.S. and is usually the Friday after Thanksgiving. Several theories explain its emergence.
One explanation refers to the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869 when two Wall Street financiers bought up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.
Another story is that in the nineteenth century plantation owners could buy enslaved worker for lower prices, whereas third approach assumes that Black Friday refers to the Wall Street Crash on a Thursday in 1929 which was the trigger for the Great Depression in the following years. The theory suggests all the people tried to withdraw their money one day after the crash, causing a lot of chaos. These myths however are controversial, since there is only little evidence supporting the stories told.
We can be very sure though, that Black Friday finally established about 60 years ago when the day after Thanksgiving hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city of Philadelphia in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Shoplifters also took advantage of the bedlam in stores and made off with merchandise. The term “Black Friday“ was used by the Police of Philadelphia to describe the chaos. Although retailers tried to rename it to “Big Friday“ the term “Black Friday“ caught on. Sometime in the late 1980s, however, retailers found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turned it into something with a more positive connotation: The turn from red to black numbers — a concept which describes that retailers gain profit form their business for the first time in the year. Maybe the term also has evolved because retailers received so much money on one day, that in the evening their hands are black because of all the money went through their hands.
Whatever the exact origin may have been, today it is hard to imagine a year without Black Friday. The shopping holiday has gained enormous popularity outside of the U.S. around the whole globes and it continues to spread and to manifest itself. Also Enroutes customers are excited about the great offers! So let’s shop from the large variety of Enroutes retailers and receive credits until the next ride in public transportation is for free!