The Birth Of Black Friday
We’ve all seen it plastered over our emails and local shops but where does the word and the idea of Black Friday actually come from?
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the US and since the 1930s it has been considered the start of the Christmas shopping season. The word ‘Black’ from ‘Black Friday’ came from the 1950s when the term came to be used by police in Philadelphia and Rochester to describe the mass crowds and traffic the day after Thanksgiving due to the start of the Christmas shopping season. Use of the phrase spread throughout America from the 1950s to the 1980s when by the 1980s most of the states had heard of and were using the term.
Other countries that celebrate Black Friday include: Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Romania, India and France. The day that marks the start of the huge shopping season only recently became popular in the UK with brands such as Amazon starting to introduce it to the nation as early as the start of the 21st century. In 2013, Asda teamed up with Walmart in the US to bring the UK Black Friday and in 2014 more UK big businesses adopted the idea of Black Friday such as John Lewis, Very.co.uk and Argos. Now in 2015 it was reported that UK shoppers spent £2billion in stores and online in 24 hours.
Black Friday is accompanied by violence and chaos in stores because of customers fighting and rushing to buy certain goods, usually the injuries are minor but sometimes people do suffer seriously from horrible accidents involved with Black Friday. For instance in 2008, a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in New York waited outside for the 5:00 am opening of the local Wal-Mart. When the doors opened the crowd pushed forward and whilst breaking the door down, a 34-year-old employee was trampled to death. The shoppers didn’t appear concerned with the victim's fate, refusing to halt their stampede when other employees attempted to intervene and help the injured employee.
By Ellie Parry Gumley House
