Why is it called Black Friday?

The term originated with the Philadelphia police department, who used it in the 1950s and early 1960s to describe the day after Thanksgiving, when suburban shoppers and football fans arriving for the annual Army-Navy game flooded downtown, jamming traffic, overwhelming stores, and requiring every officer to work long shifts. Local newspaper usage from 1961 documents the term in exactly this sense, and merchants disliked it enough to briefly attempt renaming it Big Friday, which did not take.

The accounting explanation, that retailers operate at a loss all year and move into the black with holiday sales, appears in print only from the 1980s and is a retroactive rebranding designed to replace the negative connotation with a positive one. It is also not how retail finances work, since most retailers are profitable well before November. The story has been repeated so widely that it is now the more familiar version, which makes it a useful example of how a flattering etymology can displace a documented one.

The day's practical significance is real regardless of the name. It became the heaviest shopping day of the year by the early 2000s, spawned Cyber Monday in 2005 as a marketing term for online sales, and has since diffused into weeks of promotions that begin before Thanksgiving. Consumer protection agencies note that the discounts are frequently measured against inflated reference prices and that many advertised deals match prices available at other times of the year, which is worth checking before waiting in line for anything.