Black Friday: Good, Bad or just Ugly

559 Words2 Pages

Over the years, Black Friday has become its own faux national holiday. Given that, when did that phrase become associated with excessive joyful spending, astounding deals and immense profits?
In fact, history has shown us that the word “Black” has long been associated with loss, devastation or just plain back luck. For example, the sell-off day right before the 1929 stock market crash, was referred to as Black Monday. Another example happened in 1954, it was referred to as Black Wednesday since it was a day of widespread air traffic bedlam (Stout). In fact, the first use of the term Black Friday was in 1870, by The New York Times, in an article about the gold market crash (Stout).
Notably, an executive producer from Vocabulary.com, Ben Zimmer, said “its association with shopping on the day after Thanksgiving began in Philadelphia in the 1960” (qdt. In Stout). This was predominantly due to hordes of consumers heading out to shop, triggering major traffic headaches, so it became a less than positive reference. As a matter of fact, numerous retailers wanted that day to have a more positive name attached to it like, Big Friday, but it never caught on. Thus, a new meaning was associated with Black Friday. According to Zimmer, that meaning was “The day retailer’s books went from the red ink to black” (qdt. In Stout).
Whereas, on November 29, 2013 there was an article, in U.S. News Digital Weekly titled “Black Friday by the Number” (Zalan). This quiz pertained to the financial aspects such as hot toys, number of shoppers and the total retail workers hired for the 2012 Black Friday shopping season. Notably, over that particular Thanksgiving weekend, shoppers spent an average of $423 each. Furthermore, approximately 700,000...

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... keeping their businesses closed on Thanksgiving, along with consumers boycotting stores, also starting online petitions and causing some workers to go on strike(Tuttle)?

Works Cited
“Black Friday Breakdown." Newsweek. Newsweek LLC, 28 November 2011. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 March 2014.
Hauser, Christine. "The Spectacle and Sales of Black Friday." New York Times. New York Times, 29 November 2013. Web. 24 March 2014.
Stout, Hilary. "The Transformation of Black Friday." New York Times. New York Times, 23 November 2014. Web. 24 March 2014.
Tuttle, Brad. "Tis The Season To Beg, Pressure, And Guilt Retailers To Stop Ruining The Season." Time.com. Time Inc., 14 November 2013. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 March 2014.
Zalan, Kira. "Black Friday By The Numbers." U.S. New Digital Weekly. U.S. News, 29 Mar. 2013. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 March 2014.

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