The Mildly Depressing History of 'Black Friday'

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, has become a quasi-holiday in the United States that’s marked by consumer discounts, shopping, and violence. While its importance is slowly waning as online shopping grows, it’s still a big deal in the U.S.—it’s estimated that around 166 million American consumers went shopping during Black Friday weekend in 2022. But how did Black Friday start? What does it all mean?

When was the first Black Friday?

“Black Friday” in the United States originally referred to the start of the Panic of 1869, when the collapse of the price of gold devastated the national economy, but “Black Friday” as a description of a day after Thanksgiving only dates back to 1951. It first appeared in the journal Factory Management and Maintenance to refer to the number of employees who skipped work on the day after Thanksgiving. Around the same time, the police in Philadelphia and Rochester started informally using “Black Friday” to describe the traffic and crowds that appeared in their cities as shoppers hit the stores on the day after Thanksgiving. The phrase gradually caught on—it was picked up by national press in 1975 when the New York Times used the phrase to describe the day after Thanksgiving and the shopping and sales it brings.

But even before it had a name, Black Friday was a thing. The day after Thanksgiving was known by merchants as the start of the shopping season since the late 1800s. Back then and into the 20th century, retailers often sponsored Thanksgiving Day parades that traditionally ended with an appearance by Santa Claus, as if to say, “Now it’s time to shop for Christmas.” By unspoken agreement among retailers, Christmas-themed advertisements rarely appeared prior to Thanksgiving in our grandparents’ day.

Black Friday’s problematic name

Referring to a day as “black” traditionally denotes a day of calamity or tragedy, leading some to suggest different names for the day. In the early 1960s, the Philadelphia merchants suggested “Big Friday,” a name which did not catch on leaving retailers with the weak explanation that “black” in Black Friday refers to the black ink denoting profits in ledger (as if they aren’t making money the rest of the year).

A more modern issue with the name is that Black Friday sales now lasts for several days, bleeding over into Saturday, Sunday, “Cyber Monday,” and even Tuesday, leaving people saying things like, “Do you want to go Black Friday shopping this Sunday?” So far, alternative names like “Five-Day Frenzy” and “The day I get to trample someone to save 8 bucks on a Nespresso” haven’t caught on. But here’s hoping.

The failure of “Black Thursday”

An insatiable thirst for profits led many retailers to try to push the start of Black Friday back to Thursday. Beginning around 2011, some large retailers—Wal-Mart, Kmart, Toys R Us and others—began opening on Thanksgiving. The trend never really caught on, with many appalled that employees were being forced to work on Thanksgiving or angry that consumerism was encroaching upon a holiday meant to celebrate colonialism. By 2021 most major retailers were closed on Thanksgiving.

Cyber Monday: Black Friday’s bastard child

The term “Cyber Monday” describes the boost in online retail sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving from workers returning to the office and getting right to online shopping. It first appeared on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled “’Cyber Monday’ Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year.” This may be the most influential press release ever written.

Buy Nothing Day: mortal enemy of Black Friday

Anti-consumerists have named the day after Thanksgiving “Buy Nothing Day,” a day you can celebrate by doing charity work or simply not purchasing anything. Invented by artist Ted Dave for AdBusters magazine, the first Buy Nothing Day was celebrated in Canada in 1992. It’s hard to measure the success of the alternative holiday. Both online and brick-and-mortar retail sales have increased sharply since 1992, suggesting Buy Nothing Day’s effect is negligible, but on the other hand, maybe big retailers are earning millions less than they would be if someone on Twitter didn’t remind you not to go shopping every Black Friday.

Black Friday’s official death count

Depending to how you measure it, Black Friday has resulted in between 1 and 17 deaths since 2010. Jdimytai Damour is the only person killed directly by a Black Friday sale. The 34-year-old stock clerk was trampled to death by a surging crowd at a Long Island WalMart on Black Friday in 2008. If you include car accidents, shootings, retail worker suicides, and fatal heart attacks, Black Friday’s death toll balloons to 17, with 125 reported injuries.

Black Friday: a gigantic scam?

Critics of Black Friday have pointed out that there is a better time to buy a new TV (The week before the Super Bowl) and other goods, and that savings from Black Friday shopping are largely illusionary—big-ticket “door buster” items generally sell out quickly, leaving goods that are, by and large, priced the same as the would be at any other time of year.

Despite the unpleasantness of shopping when it’s super crowded and the frustration of hunting for bargains that often don’t exist, Black Friday remains an unofficial holiday celebrated by over 100 million Americans in one way or another. What that says about our country and capitalism is unclear, but I’m going to continue my personal day-after-Thanksgiving tradition of thinking about going for a walk but playing video games instead.