What Is Black Friday? Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart, H and M and more are offering Black Friday sale in India. But what exactly, is Black Friday?
By Tahira Noor Khan •
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Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is regarded as the start of the holiday season and is also considered one of the biggest shopping time in the US.
Due to globalisation, the tradition of Black Friday Sale is happening in other corners of the world as well. This year Black Friday falls on November 29.
What is the history of the name Black Friday?
There are numerous theories about how the day got to be named "Black Friday.' Some of the most popular ones are:
In the US, to have a long weekend after Thanksgiving it is claimed that people will take sick leave to have a long weekend. During this time, people will go on shopping in large crowds creating traffic and mayhem. So, it is the term was coined the policemen as "Black Friday.'
According to the writer Sarah Pruitt,
After an entire year of operating at a loss (which were written down in the red) stores would supposedly earn a profit (which were recorded in the black) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers shopped like crazy on discounted merchandise.
The result was the "red to black" concept of the holiday mentioned earlier and the notion that the day after Thanksgiving marked the occasion when America's stores finally turned a profit.
Pruitt states this version is not the original one. The other theory that Pruitt claims to be true goes back to 1869.
According to this theory, the first recorded use of the term "Black Friday" was applied not to holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869.
In 1869 two Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk plotted together to buy up as much as they could of the nation's gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. When they executed their plan, everyone from "Wall Street Barons to Farmers" were bankrupted and the stock market went into a free-fall.
