The origins of Black Friday - Deepstash

The origins of Black Friday

The term was made-up by the overworked Philadelphia police officers.

  • In the 1950s, crowds of shoppers and travelers flooded Philadelphia the day after Thanksgiving.
  • Philadelphia stores hosted major sales that day, but the city also hosted the Army-Navy football game on Saturday of the same weekend.
  • Because of the crowds, traffic cops were required to work 12-hour shifts, and they were not allowed to take the day off.
  • Over time, the annoyed and fatigued officers started to refer to this dreaded workday as "Black Friday."
  • The term became popular and spread to store salespeople who used "Black Friday” to describe the long lines and general chaos they had to deal with on that day.

47

324 reads

CURATED FROM

IDEAS CURATED BY

verra_

"Many people are in the dark when it comes to money, and I'm going to turn on the lights. " ~ Suze Orman

The idea is part of this collection:

7 Books on Habits

Learn more about moneyandinvestments with this collection

How to break bad habits

How habits are formed

The importance of consistency

Related collections

Similar ideas to The origins of Black Friday

Why Black Friday Is β€œBlack”

Black Friday wasn’t a great day for the police departments in mid-20th-century Philadelphia. By the 1960s, locals had taken to calling the chaotic day after Thanksgiving β€œBlack Friday.”

In 1950s Philadelphia, Thanksgiving weekend was a mob scene. The A...

The real origin of Black Friday

  • Before retail repackaged Black Friday, it had a more sinister meaning. The earliest use of the phrase Black Friday dates to 1869. It was the day gold prices plummeted and caused a market crash. The economic effects lasted for years.
  • Traffic police coined the phrase...

The wholesome story of Black Friday

The wholesome story of Black Friday

The wholesome story of Black Friday is that happy shoppers would flood local shops and malls the day after Thanksgiving, and the extra spending would put retailers "in the black" for the year.

The Friday after Thanksgiving was named "Black Friday" and it became the unofficial start of the ...

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

β€”

100+ Learning Journeys

β€”

Access to 200,000+ ideas

β€”

Access to the mobile app

β€”

Unlimited idea saving

β€”

β€”

Unlimited history

β€”

β€”

Unlimited listening to ideas

β€”

β€”

Downloading & offline access

β€”

β€”

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates