November 25, 1966: The Genesis of "Black Friday" Shopping

November 25, 1966: "Black Friday" becomes a thing on the day after Thanksgiving. According to a 2022 article on Cracked.com:

A common explanation of the name "Black Friday" is that is has to do with accounting. In older accounting practices, negative numbers were written in red ink and positive numbers in black ink. Thus, a business losing money is "in the red" and a profitable business is "in the black." Black Friday is supposedly the first day many stores turn a profit for the year.

In reality, Black Friday earned its name because it sucks. The term was coined in Philadelphia in 1966. "Black" was an adjective given to disastrous days in history. "Black Friday" also refers to the stock market crash in 1929 that started the Great Depression, as well as a flood in Cincinnati in 1937. 

In 1966, the Philadelphia police hated the first day of the holiday shopping season, because of the massive traffic jams and the packed sidewalks it caused. Also, presumably because they wished they could be off from work like everyone else. Frazzled retail workers and exhausted shoppers were more than willing to accept the term.

The red ink/black ink explanation was never heard of until the early 1980s. Store owners who were satisfied with their sales started to become disturbed by the negative-sounding nickname. The president of Strawbridge & Clothier said, "It sounds like the end of the world, and we really like the day. If anything it should be called "Green Friday." Another department store executive was even more hot and bothered, calling the name "the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. Why would anyone call a day, when everyone is happy and has smiles on their faces, Black Friday?"

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Two mistakes: The Crash of 1929 began on a Thursday, and hit rock bottom on the following Tuesday. However, there were stock market "panics" (the pre-1929 term for a crash) in 1869, which became known as Black Friday; and in 1893, although that one didn't get the name. And the 1937 Mill Creek Flood in Cincinnati crested on a Sunday. Strawbridge & Clothier, a Philly retail icon, like so many other local department store chains, was bought out by Macy's, in their case in 2005.

In New York, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade always concludes with a float with a man dressed as Santa Claus on it. This means that the next day is the semi-official beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Macy's had the clout to promote that, as they had successfully promoted their Herald Square (34th Street, 6th Avenue and Broadway) flagship store as "the world's biggest store." (Whether it is actually the world's largest department store is in dispute.)

The earliest known use of the phrase "Black Friday" to refer to the day after Thanksgiving occurred in the journal Factory Management and Maintenance, in its issue for November 1951, and again in 1952. There, it referred to the practice of workers calling in sick on the day after Thanksgiving, in order to have a four-day weekend. However, this use does not appear to have caught on. By the time I started school in the Autumn of 1975, schools were already giving the day after Thanksgiving off. But I hadn't yet heard of the day being called "Black Friday."

Also in 1975, on November 29, the Saturday after Thanksgiving that year, the phrase first appeared in The New York Times, referring to "the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year." However, acknowledging that their city was the 1st to use it, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1985 that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term.

By that time, I was in high school in Central Jersey, a little closer to New York than to Philadelphia, and I had heard of it. That year, on Black Friday, I went to the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, near the Jersey Shore, and it was a mistake. It was the 1980s, a decade of conspicuous consumerism, and "Black Friday" had really become a thing.

For many years, it was common for retailers to open with "Doorbusters" sales at 6:00 AM, with some people lining up outside earlier than that, sometimes camping out all night long. Sometimes, people began pounding on the stores' front doors, trying to get them to open earlier. Sometimes, opening the doors -- on time or otherwise -- led to big crowd rushes, shoppers getting trampled, and fights over the year's most-wanted items, which led to arrests.

In the late 2000s, some stores moved their openings back to 4:00, then to 12:01 AM. In 2010, Toys 'R' Us broke the taboo against stores being open on T-Day itself, opening at 10:00 PM on Thanksgiving night. In 2012, Walmart moved it back to 8:00 PM. In 2014, some stores had just said the hell with it, and opened at 6:00 AM on Thanksgiving Day itself.

In response to the "big box stores" like Walmart and Home Depot that had forced many smaller companies and "mom-and-pop stores" out of business, some cities and States began promoting "Small Business Saturday." With the growth of the Internet, many retailers, including some that only exist online, had been promoting sales on "Cyber Monday," the day after the end of Thanksgiving weekend.

When I worked in retail, I always volunteered to work on the day after Thanksgiving, and also on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the last 3 of those usually having the stores close at 6:00 PM, partly in order to give a break to other workers who might want those days off, and partly so that I could get December 18, my birthday, off.

In 1995, I worked at a JCPenney store. There was a One Day Sale 2 Saturdays before Thanksgiving, and that was more crowded, and the shoppers less courteous, than they were on Black Friday. On that day, they were comparatively tame and reasonable.

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November 25, 1966 was, as suggested, a Friday. Baseball was out of season. There were no football games: Not in the NFL, not in the AFL, not even in college ball. And there were no games scheduled in the NHL. But there were 4 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the Cincinnati Royals, 115-109 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Oscar Robertson had 27 points.

* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 129-115 at the Baltimore Civic Center (now the CFG Bank Arena). It was just another day at the office for Wilt Chamberlain: 41 points and 19 rebounds.

* The Detroit Pistons beat the Boston Celtics, 107-105 at Cobo Hall (now Huntington Place) in Detroit.

* And the Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 121-117 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. In defeat, Elgin Baylor had 32 points and 18 rebounds.