When Friday Goes Black

     After giving it some thought, I decided not to join the hundreds of other bloggers in writing about Thanksgiving this week. A big part of the reason is (besides the fact that I think we´ve heard a little too much about turkeys, stuffing, and Pilgrims this week) that I´m sure most of my readers have heard a lot about Thanksgiving and very little, if anything, about the day after: Black Friday. I also consider the timing right since this year I saw for the first time a few references to this unofficial holiday here in Spain (see picture on the right).

     In a nutshell Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and the official kickoff of the Christmas shopping season. The term was first used in the early 1950 by business managers referring to the economic losses caused by the number of people who called in sick that day. Later in the 60´s it was used again by the Philadelphia police department to describe the hordes of shoppers who invaded (and collapsed) the downtown area causing all sorts of accidents and incidents. Then, sometime during the 1980´s, retailers aggressively campaigned to get rid of the negative connotation surrounding the term "BLACK Friday" by highlighting that the color could very well refer to all the "red ink" that magically turned black on merchants´balance sheets on this day.

     Nowadays Black Friday has grown in every way. It has grown popular to surpass the Saturday before Christmas as the most active shopping day of the year. It has also grown in length with big retailers such as Target and Best Buy opening earlier and earlier. In fact "Black Friday" became "Black Thursday" this year for the first time, with WalMart opening at 10 PM on Thanksgiving night. Finally Black Friday also continues getting bigger by its numbers, with 20.7 % more money spent this year over 2011.

     No matter what time stores open, or how long they stay open, shoppers throughout the US line up for hours to avoid missing out on the best bargains of the year. Most Americans peacefully shop (though a lot!) and go home. However, every year the frenzy Black Friday creates results in a few stories of violence and injuries on the morning news the Saturday after (just take a look at this example). Because of this, retailers increasingly try to implement measures to reduce crowds and keep crazy shoppers in line. In the early 2000´s for example, many stores issued coupons for exactly the number of some of their most popular items that people had to get beforehand. Another strategy merchants recently resorted to was offering the same or slightly better deals to those who shopped online on the Monday after, which has come to be known as "Cyber-Monday," which makes Black Friday a total of five days long. Who knows, at this rate we may soon end up with a whole "Black Month"!