Why did Black Friday become one of the biggest shopping days of the year?

Hook

Why and how did Black Friday become one of the biggest shopping days of the year? This year it lands on November twenty seventh, and stores have been advertising it for weeks. But the name, the date, and even a lot of the deals have a stranger story than you might think.

Name

Start with the name. You've probably heard that Black Friday is when stores finally turn a profit, going from red ink to black. That explanation came later. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, police in Philadelphia were using the term to describe the traffic jams and chaos the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers and football fans flooded the city.

Date

The date itself was once a political fight. In 1939, Thanksgiving was set to fall on the last Thursday of November, which would have left a short shopping season. President Franklin Roosevelt moved it a week earlier to give stores more time. Critics called it Franksgiving. In 1941, Congress fixed Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, where it is today.

Why

So why does it work? Many people have the day off. Paychecks and holiday budgets are ready. And stores use doorbusters, a few items priced so low they may lose money, just to get people through the door, hoping they'll buy other things at full price.

Online

Then shopping moved online. Cyber Monday was named in 2005, and today online sales over the Thanksgiving weekend are measured in tens of billions of dollars. Black Friday isn't just one day anymore. Many sales start in early November and run for weeks.

Deals

But are the deals real? In the UK, the consumer group Which? tracked prices for a year and found that most Black Friday deals were the same price or cheaper at other times of the year. Some list prices are inflated so the discount looks bigger. A real deal is one you can check against the price history.

Tips

So here's how shoppers protect themselves. Use a price tracker to see an item's history. Compare the exact model number, since some products are made just for sales events. And remember that a discount on something you didn't need isn't savings at all.

Close

So Black Friday got its shopping-day name from traffic chaos in Philadelphia, its date from a presidential experiment and an act of Congress, and its power from the promise of a deal, real or not. ThatsWhyHow.