EXPLAINER: Why is it called 'Black Friday?'

‘How did Black Friday get its name?’ A point to ponder for all of us  as it  leads to an unending confusion and lots of queries about the name.

In the late 19th century, US President Abraham Lincoln designated the Thanksgiving holiday as the last Thursday of November. 

The next Friday, which was unofficially considered the start of the Christmas season back then, wasn’t called ‘Black Friday’ until September 24, 1869, when two brothers, Jay Gould and James Fisk created a boom-and-bust cycle on Wall Street by bringing in huge amounts of gold, which eventually caused the stock market to crash as prices fell 20%. 

The two brothers, taking benefit of the corruption in the system, escaped the whole situation without any punishment. From there, the term ‘Black Friday’ was initially used to indicate the intensity of the event.

Another possible clause behind the story is an evidence that dates back to 1950s used to describe the chaos caused by crowds of shoppers filling the streets ahead of a football game in Philadelphia, held on that particular Saturday every year. 

The shoplifters would take advantage of the chaos to rob stores, making store owners go into loss. By 1980s, the authorities thought of a way to cash this situation, and made it into a one-day-sales extravaganza, which actually worked and turned the losses of shoppers into profits.

The term then spread throughout the country and then all across the globe, initiating a global phenomenon of billions of discounts and price cuts for customers and money-making for enterprises. 

This gave birth to another retail holiday, the ‘Cyber Monday’, but behold, you aren’t going to get all here. Stay tuned for more.