It's currently booming from every corner of the internet: “Black Friday Sale”!

But although many online stores use the term “Black Friday” to throw out one offer after another, many consumers are left with the big question of what exactly that means. “Black Friday” doesn’t really sound particularly positive, does it?

And in fact, the term “Black Friday” did not originally have a positive connotation; days of the week with the color black always referred to negative events!

The black days of the week

There have already been some dates that went down in recent history as black days. Here are some examples:

Black Thursday: October 24, 1929 is so called because on this day investors on Wall Street caused the stock market to collapse and many people lost their wealth as a result.

Black Tuesday: This is what October 29, 1929 is called, the fourth day of the stock market crash . 16 million shares were traded on the stock exchange, billions of dollars were lost. This day marks the point at which America fell into the “Great Depression,” which lasted until 1939.

Black Monday: We stay on the stock market, that's what October 19, 1987 is called . On that day, the Dow Jones index lost nearly 22% in the US as more was sold than bought. Only through clever investments was the market able to slowly recover.

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Black Friday

In the USA, “Thanksgiving” is always celebrated on the last Thursday in November. The Friday after that was called "Black Friday", but only since 1961 , and for the following reason: The police officers in Philadelphia always sarcastically called the two days after "Thanksgiving", when the Christmas shopping season begins in the USA, "Black Friday". “Black Saturday” because the greatly increased traffic volume and the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping repeatedly led to a large number of accidents and even violence.

In 1966, the term officially appeared for the first time in an advertisement by the stamp dealer “Apfelbaum's”, which described how hectic things were in those days after “Thanksgiving”, but that you could get nicer and better stamps from him every day of the year than any other store in the world.

Black Friday is given a positive spin

The term became more and more viral, which of course didn't make retailers particularly happy: after all, their Christmas offers were not innocent of the turmoil of those days.

That's why a lot of advertising was used to make the term "Black Friday" something positive. The color was a perfect choice:
when traders recorded losses in their books, they used red color; when they recorded profits, black color was used.

In the USA, purchases after “Thanksgiving” for almost 70 percent of the gross domestic product, so almost every retailer (except perhaps retailers for summer products) is likely to be in the black! In addition, many retailers then started offering exclusive special offers that were only available from them on Black Friday.

Positive and negative

And so the originally negative term “Black Friday” was gradually transformed into something positive in the minds of consumers: the best deals are available on that day!

Unfortunately, it still deserves : from 2010 to 2019, shopping riots in the USA led to 12 deaths and 117 injuries. People are trampled to death , have shootouts over a parking space and don't shy away from fist fights .

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Conclusion

You shouldn't panic too much, because "Black Friday" is basically just the first day of sales (or a whole week for some online stores). Very often the next good offers come on “ Cyber ​​Monday ” (the Monday after “Thanksgiving”) and “ Green Monday ” (the Monday around two weeks before Christmas).

Or you simply shop when you think you have found something nice for your loved ones. No matter when.

Article image: Shutterstock / By maximmmmum

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