Why Do We Call It 'Black Friday?'

Everybody uses the term "Black Friday" to describe today, the big shopping day after Thanksgiving, but why?

No, it doesn't mean the mood of those who boycott the annual crush of bargain seekers. Nor is it the risk of getting a black eye while jostling for coveted items.

"One popular but false explanation is that the name marks the day retailers end an 11-month stretch of red ink and harvest profits for the first time all year," said a Bloomberg Businessweek article Tuesday.

"There are a number of myths about the origin of the name," wrote linguist Ben Zimmer in the Visual Thesaurus last year. "Retailers would like you to believe that it's the day when stores turn a profit on the year, thus 'going into the black.' But don't you believe it."

Zimmer – language columnist for The Boston Globe and the former "On Language" columnist for The New York Times Magazine – said use of the term for the shopping rush after Thanksgiving can be traced to Philadelphia police officers in the early 1960s describing their headaches and 12-hour shifts caused by severe traffic congestion. 

He cited research by Bonnie Taylor-Blake showing that the interpretation of "Black Friday" as a reference to businesses getting into the black on that day didn't arise until 1980s.

"So the 'back in the black' explanation was clearly a way to rebrand Black Friday with more positive connotations," Zimmer said.

"It's worth noting," he added, "that all of the historical predecessors for the modern Black Friday were negative events."

"Black Friday" does indeed have a dark pedigree, having been associated with a number of financial disasters and originally with a political threat. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) traces its origin in England back to Dec. 6, 1745 when the landing of the Young Pretender was announced in London.

The first U.S. "Black Friday" noted by the OED was Sept. 24, 1869, when a financial panic struck Wall Street.

Any panic associated with Black Friday today usually centers on whether the store will sell out of whatever you want to buy before you can lay hands on it.

And if present trends continue, we may need to add "Black Thursday" to the lexicon.

This year, Black Friday sales began hours before midnight on Thursday night at many retailers, before many folks had finished digesting their Thanksgiving dinners.

See the attached short video of eager shoppers lined up outside Target in Albany for early admission Thursday night. 

How are you spending Black Friday? Tell us in the comments.