Black Friday Background
Tomorrow starts what will probably be one of the most hectic days for shops that there is. Yes, by this, I do mean black Friday. Once a year, for a day or even a whole weekend, everything becomes starkly cheaper and all of the money that comes in from payday gets spent on cheaper Christmas presents of the same quality. Nowadays, you can avoid the manic shops and crazy lines with online shopping, with delivery or click and collective. But I still wonder why it is that everything becomes discounted on this one specific Friday of the year.
The first use of the term ‘Black Friday’ is one that originated with the crash of the U.S gold market in the September of 1869. Two men of Wallstreet, financers by the names of Gould and Fisk, as well as Corbin, who’s brother-in-law was the president , who bought large amounts of gold that was in the U.S, meaning to drive the prices of the gold that they held up, so that they could sell it on for even larger profits. By buying as much gold as they could, they made the material rarer, more difficult to find and was in turn more expensive for it. They even had the president unwittingly in their pocket and began to manipulate the government as well as the market. This however, all came crashing down around them on one Friday when the conspiracy unravelled, the entire market began to crash and the entire country basically went bankrupt. This, however, is not the reason that the event occurs at all.
The use of this name cannot be solely attributed to this reason however. The holiday takes place after the American thanksgiving holiday and so, understandably, it is a time when people and tourists would be there to spend more money. It is thought that the use of the term Black Friday came from the fact that, when noting sales by hand, shops would note their loses in red and their profits in black. Because of the increase in sales, this was one of the main times of year that such shops would actually be in the black rather than in the red, hence the use of the term Black Friday. This was only used by shop keepers however and so were not the first to spread it. This falls to police officers in Philedelphia, who, unable to take days off because of the chaos caused by the increased sales and tourists, would sarcastically use the term. It was later used in print, which became the widespread used name for the post-ThanksGiving sales.
While it may be an American originated Holiday, with all of its roots in American history and culture, it has now become a widespread event that saves people large amounts of money every year on birthday and Christmas presents for the seasons to come. Perhaps, this month, you will be looking for some steals and deals amongst your local or online black Friday sales.
Source