The Rise (and Fall) of Black Friday
- P
- Jul 26
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 27
The concept of Black Friday has risen (and fallen) for over 100 years. It had become tradition for families, celebrating great deals after the holidays together, making crazy couponers’ dreams come true every year. In my experience, Black Friday was always exciting and intriguing to me. My mother has worked Asset Protection at the two biggest retailers in the nation: Walmart, and Target. The endless stories of the fights, the arrests, and the steals my mother got for working behind the scenes for me and my sister. I even sat in her office a few years while this all happened. I grew up loving shopping, I'm high maintenance, I love living in lavish, and a Leo. I. Love. Shopping. Black Friday is my heaven as a poor Leo, especially for entertainment. Now, let's get into it, because Black Friday has a long history.
The phrase “Black Friday” dates all the way back to 1869, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Christmas shopping. To everyone's surprise, two white men (boooo), Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, notorious Wall Street financers, brought it upon them to buy up as much as they could of the United States gold, to sell it all for a profitable price. You can imagine what that did. News flash, it bankrupted everyone on Wall Street, causing a market crash. Well after that happened, the phrase carried that weight for decades until the 1950’s-60’s in Philadelphia. Created as a complaint from traffic police about the intense traffic jams and horrible crowding of the retail stores the day after Thanksgiving. After carrying the evil weight for so long, retailers found a way in the 1980’s to reinvent it from negative to positive, by saying sales need to go from the “red” state (bad sales) to the “black” state (good sales). That created the Black Friday we all know and love of today.
Black Friday to us now has a completely different meaning to a human who lived only a century ago. Now, its date is traditionally placed on the last Friday of November each year, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. Retailers offer massive (even more massive then usual) discounts to millions of shoppers, ranging from brands from Walmart, to Sephora, to Payless, Sears, and now famous clothes retailers like Pacsun, and Victorias Secret. The event of Black Friday became synonymous with long lines, midnight store openings, camping outside stores, excitement for deals, shoplifting, and fighting. It truly was all the rage for not only consumers, but businesses too. Everyone thrived and benefited from Black Friday, until no one did.
A key moment for the job markets every year, I learned, particularly in economics and business operations, is Black Friday. It highlights demand for talent and creativity within the job force. It's a stress test for many businesses. Who can have the best deals? What products will customers want to die for? How can we uphold the demand? In my opinion, Black Friday is one of the smartest concepts to uphold a stable economy. However, for the employees... not so much. Notoriously, retail workers get the short end of the stick: low wages, no employee benefits, unreliable schedules, and low meaning. Now, take all of that, and add on a week of chaos in your aisles, people hounding you about where things are, what deals are the best, even longer work hours, and constant lines and chatter with no breaks. Sounds like hell, right? That's what Black Friday is to retail workers. A night of pure hell. There's always two sides with concepts like this, heaven and hell. Black Friday in particular is a broke college kid's favorite day, a working single mom's savior, or a retail employee's personal hell.
Unfortunately, like most good things, they come to an end. The downfall of Black Friday has been slowly curating over time. Over the years it has become more violent, wilder crowds, people being trampled and assaulted. One moment was in 2008, a Walmart employee was killed, trampled over, on that Black Friday- not even a week on the job. I can't even imagine what that must've felt like. This comes right after the Great Recession in 2008, which made drastic changes in the discounts, making it deadlier for careless consumerism. Even in the past years, our economy has dwindled, and as I am writing this, we are hitting another horrible recession again.
Another killer for her, the internet. The internet changed everything for Black Friday, with some reporting being in line at a Best Buy and finding a better deal on the phone they were in line for to buy already online. Online deals are more convenient; we carry our goddamned phones with us everywhere, it's at our fingertips, literally. Over time, online shoppers realized this, and it soared, and the term “Cyber Monday” was coined by online retailers, simulating the sales of Black Friday, but online instead. Massive online retailers started creating shopping demand through events like Prime Day that can continue throughout the year and keep consumers wanting more. This unfortunately blew up after the COVID-19 pandemic, as isolation was worldwide, and since then, the concept of Black Friday is getting phased out and being replaced by “Black November,” as retailers hope to capture the sales throughout the month of November and begin advertising it earlier and earlier.
A question I've been burning to ask all these years is, is Black Friday actually important? Unfortunately, I learned, yes, it is. It is critical for the retail sector; Black Friday can account for 20% or more of annual sales for many retailers. The sales figures from Black Friday are also considered a sign of the overall economic health of the country and a way to measure consumer confidence in spending. It created the job market of seasonal work, where companies can increase hiring and wages for a short period of time to help combat the demand of the day. Not only that, but it has become a holiday tradition for families and provides great deals for struggling humans trying to make their own families happy.
I stopped hearing fun stories from my mother, or my friends about their shopping trips, stopped seeing YouTube hauls from creators on the big day. I will never forget the days I would go to Toys R Us with my mother and pick out all the best toys from all the deals because that was one of the only days my mother was able to afford our lavish items. Or the time I went shopping on my own with my best friend in high school and we witnessed a fight breaking out at Burlington, cops running, and copped an entire 6ft. Christmas tree for $40 and put it in my tiny room. Black Friday, you are always in my heart. May she rest in peace.
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