According to TheFactSite.com here are the Top 10 Facts about Black Friday! Some of theses facts hit home for sure! LOL especially #10….
1. “Black Friday” used to refer to stock market crashes in the 1800s.
Although it is now known as the biggest shopping day in the US, the term “Black Friday” originally referred to very different events.
In the US, the first time the term was used was on 24 September 1869, when two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk, tried to corner the gold market on the New York Stock Exchange.
When the government stepped in to correct the distortion by flooding the market with gold, prices plummeted and many investors lost sizable fortunes.
2. “Santa Claus parades” were Black Friday’s predecessor.
For many Americans, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has become part of the holiday ritual.
But the event actually was inspired from the US’s neighbours in the north. Canadian department store Eaton’s held the first “Santa Claus parade” on 2 December 1905. Once Santa appeared at the end of the parade, the signal was that the holiday season – and thus, holiday shopping, had begun. Of course, consumers were encouraged to buy their presents at Eaton’s.
US department stores such as Macy’s took inspiration from the parade, and started sponsoring similar efforts across the country. In 1924, New York saw the first Macy’s parade featuring animals from Central Park Zoo and run by the store’s employees.
3. The date of Thanksgiving was, indirectly, determined by holiday shoppers.
From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, in a custom started by US President Abraham Lincoln, the president would declare a “day of thanks giving” on the last Thursday in November. This could either fall on the fourth or fifth Thursday in the month.
But in 1939, a funny thing happened – the last Thursday happened to be the last day in November. Retailers, worried about the shortened holiday shopping season, petitioned then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to declare the holiday a week earlier – which he did.
4. ‘Friday-after-Thanksgiving-itis’
According to Bonnie Taylor-Blake, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, Factory Management and Maintenance – a labour market newsletter – lays claim to the first use of the term as it relates to the holiday.
In 1951 the circular drew attention to the suspiciously high level of sickness that day.
“‘Friday-after-Thanksgiving-itis’ is a disease second only to the bubonic plague in its effects. At least that’s the feeling of those who have to get production out, when Black Friday comes along. The shop may be half empty, but every absentee was sick – and can prove it,”
5. Big Friday?
The city that first popularised the term was Philadelphia. Police officers, frustrated by the congestion caused by shoppers on the day, started referring to it derisively as “Black Friday”.
Unsurprisingly, retailers weren’t happy to be associated with traffic and smog.
So they tried to rebrand the day “Big Friday”, according to a 1961 local Philadelphia paper.
Needless to say, the term didn’t stick.
6. “Black Friday” didn’t become a national term until the 1990s.
The phrase ‘Black Friday’ remained a Philadelphia quirk for a surprisingly long time.
“You see it spreading a little bit to Trenton, New Jersey, which is close by, but it doesn’t really start getting mentioned outside of Philadelphia until the 1980s,” says Mr Zimmer.
“It didn’t become widespread until the mid-90s.”
7. Black Friday became the biggest shopping day of the year in 2001.
Although it’s often touted as the biggest shopping day of the year, the day didn’t earn the designation consistently until the 2000s.
That’s because, for many years, the rule wasn’t that Americans loved deals, it was that they loved procrastinating. So up until that point, it was the Saturday before Christmas that typically saw the most wallets being emptied.
8. Black Friday has become an international affair.
Canadian retailers have long winced as their customers went south on Black Friday in search of better shopping deals. So now they’ve begun offering their own sales – despite the fact that Canadian Thanksgiving is a full month earlier.
In Mexico, there is El Buen Fin, which roughly translates as “the good weekend”. It’s pegged to the anniversary of Mexico’s 1910 revolution, which sometimes falls on the same day American Thanksgiving. It lasts, as the name suggests, the entire weekend.
Beyond North America, as online shopping has grown, retailers like Amazon have looked to Cyber Monday, first heard of in 2005, to promote deals for shoppers across the globe. While in China, the recently launched ‘Singles Day’ prompted sales of two million bras in one hour, making a pile that would be three times higher than Mount Everest.
9. Black Friday is becoming extinct.
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, broke the Black Friday tradition in 2011, when it opened its store on Thanksgiving evening. Ever since, retailers have been in a race to catch up and now, 33 million Americans said they planned to shop immediately after turkey.
But don’t worry – this time, retailers have come up with a name themselves: “Grey Thursday”.
10. 12% of the Black Friday Shoppers are still drunk
12% of all black friday shoppers admitted to being under the influence while shopping.
