For the past couple of weeks, the media and retailers have been promoting "Black Friday." This is the day after Thanksgiving when stores supposedly slash their prices to give customers great deals leading into Christmas.

What I find interesting is that the word "black" is used. Now I understand black is used to indicate financial profits while red reflects financial losses but how many people know that "Black Friday" started out as a negative?  As a journalist, I did some digging and this is what I came up with: 

Originally September 24, 1869 was deemed Black Friday; a day of stock market catastrophe. In the 1960's, the Philadelphia Police Dept. used the term "Black Friday" to refer to the massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores were mobbed from opening to closing.  Needless to say, they weren't happy about having to "protect and serve" all those folks.

Many merchants objected to the use of a negative term to refer to one of the most important shopping days in the year so they came up with an alternative theory---which the media bought into. The perception would be 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. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black).

Isn't it amazing how we can be brainwashed into believing a theory? If they can do that with "Black Friday" certainly "black" can be reflected as a positive in other ways don't you think? BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS