When Is Black Friday

When Is Black Friday: Black Friday is the largest shopping day of the year and the official start to the holiday shopping season. It is the day after Thanksgiving, which falls this year on November 26. Retailers typically offer their lowest prices of the year on items in several categories, from electronics to home items. In recent years, Black Friday has grown so popular that people have started to camp out overnight to increase their chances of getting big-ticket deals. The name "Black Friday" comes from it being the first day that retailers started making a profit - known as "being in the black."

What is Black Friday?

Black Friday is known to many is the official start of Christmas shopping and big holiday deals. Many stores open in the early hours of the morning on this day to offer special deals for consumers and to help kick off the holiday shopping season. Many stores open as early as 4 a.m. and customers have been known to line up the night before and sleep outside the store so they do not miss the first deals of the day.

Black Friday has been used to describe various events historically, most notably the United States financial crisis of 1869. In 1966, a Philadelphia newspaper noted that Black Friday had been assigned by Philadelphia’s Police Department as a negative term during Christmas, to describe the terribly overcrowded streets, massive traffic, and huge mobs shopping at all of the downtown stores.

Over time, Black Friday has come to earn a positive meaning however, based on delighted shoppers who find great bargains and get their holiday shopping done early. Many also speculate that stores refer to the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday since many retailers operate at a loss through the bulk of the year, with the holiday season bringing the majority of profits.

Years ago, when accounting records were kept by hand, profits were recorded in black pen, and losses were recorded in red. Many retailers were “in the black” for the first time each year once the Christmas shopping season started, and this is thought to be another theory of where the name and association to shopping originated.