How it started and what it is now…

By Madeline Sanzone

Black Friday has widely been known as “the busiest shopping day of the year” (Paul Blart Mall Cop), pulling people from around the world to their local mall or shopping plaza to purchase not just things for themselves, but also gifts for friends and family. All of us students (and many of the adults in the building) have lived with Black Friday our whole lives, the tradition shaping a large part of our Thanksgiving/Fall breaks. However, many of us don’t spend our time considering how this day of shopping that has become integral to the economy was originally forged, along with how it became what it is today. 

The actual development of the phenomenon of Black Friday is relatively unknown, with the actual first year of its existence being undetermined. It is believed, however, that it originally started because many stores would hold parades for Thanksgiving, like the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, and then open their stores directly after for shopping. This is presumed to have begun at the end of the 1800s or the early 1900s (Walden University). It didn’t actually gain popularity throughout the country until the 1940s, where it became commonplace to open stores the day after Thanksgiving with holiday shopping deals displayed. 

The naming of the day came much later and is much debated. The most popular and commonly repeated story of the naming is from a business perspective; when businesses move from operating at a loss in sales to operating with a profit, it’s called going from the red into the black. With Black Friday being the day that businesses begin to make a profit, it would be a fitting story for how the name came to be. However, that story is likely inaccurate. Many actually believe that the true story of its naming comes from the city of Philadelphia in the 1950s. During that decade, the police began to use that term to describe the rush of the day after Thanksgiving where tourists, people from the city, and people from the suburbs would crowd the city due to both the discounts and the Army-Navy game that would occur there every year on that Saturday. Due to the fact that the police were not allowed to request that day off, had to work extra shifts, and had to deal with very large amounts of shoplifting, they began to call it the Black Friday. Corporations attempted to change the name to Big Friday to reflect how big the deals were, but they found themselves unable to due to how the name had caught on (History.Com). 

Since then, the sales have been booming. It’s believed that Black Friday reached its biggest peak for great sales and shoppers in-stores during the 1990s to the early 2000s (AARP). TVs, Nintendos, Playstations, XBoxes, and so many other expensive things were seen being sold at such discounted rates that some would consider it a shame to not have purchased them. This, however, led to fights breaking out; a punch being thrown for the last 50” TV, dropping things while your friend grabs the last Nintendo DS, throwing products in rage after someone grabbed the last Kitchenaid mixer in your favorite shade of olive green, and other acts of violence became somewhat ordinary and expected of the day. This might be why when, in 2006, Cyber Monday became a thing (AARP), no one seemed to protest. Being able to do all of your Christmas shopping directly from your couch without fear of getting trampled (or your children getting trampled if you were a parent) was incredibly tempting. 

This couch-shopping has led to Black Friday no longer being the way it once was. ““Black Friday used to be a trigger for people to go to the store, but as it’s morphed into a general promotional season, Black Friday itself lost its magic: its sense of urgency”” (NBC News) Professor Barbara Khan says. And she’s not wrong. Businesses, after seeing the statistics, which show an increase in purchases in November, have decided to start their sales in early November and often let them run the entire month as they attempt to compete with competitors. Many shoppers “say that Black Friday has transformed into Black November, a term experts use to describe the month-long discounts leading up to Thanksgiving weekend” (NBC News). 

That’s not to say that Black Friday is no longer a good day to go shopping. Even though the sales might not be as good as they once were, they’re still plenty apparent, and according to Walden University 81.7 million people still went shopping in stores in 2024, on Black Friday, with 87.3 million people shopping online, too. And in total, $74.4 billion was spent on Black Friday in 2024. So yes, even with its decline in deals, Black Friday is still the biggest shopping day of the year and likely will be for many decades to come. 

Works Cited

Malin, Zoe. “The Real Story Behind Black Friday — Plus Experts’ 2025 Predictions.” NBC News, 25 November 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/evolution-black-friday-ncna1278024. Accessed 16 December 2025.

Pruitt, Sarah. “What’s the Real History of Black Friday?” History.com, 23 November 2015, https://www.history.com/articles/black-friday-thanksgiving-origins-history. Accessed 16 December 2025.

Santanachote, Perry. “Black Friday History: How a Sale Became an Obsession.” AARP, 21 November 2025, https://www.aarp.org/money/personal-finance/black-friday-history/. Accessed 16 December 2025.

Walden University. “The History and Importance of Black Friday.” Walden University, 2025, https://www.waldenu.edu/online-bachelors-programs/bs-in-business-administration/resource/the-history-and-importance-of-black-friday. Accessed 16 December 2025.