While Thanksgiving has been a centuries-old tradition in North America, Black Friday is a modern invention that was created by retailers with the aid of none-other-than President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Everyone knows from grade school that the first Thanksgiving was observed by the Pilgrims in November 1621, but it would not become an official holiday until over two hundred years later.
In the midst of the carnage of the Civil War in 1863, Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, proposed a “national day of unity” and reflection. In response, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be a national holiday.
In those days, Christmas gifts often were limited to handmade practical items such as socks, and the day after Thanksgiving was the day when many families went out and cut down a tree for Christmas.
According to Mental Floss, the term “Black Friday” was first used on the day that the U.S. gold market crashed on September 24, 1869, leading to an economic depression.
It would be another stock market crash that would sow the seeds of the modern Black Friday.
In pre-Great Depression America, the holiday season was rigidly observed, and people did not buy gifts until after Thanksgiving, and that presented a problem for the retail industry. Thanksgiving was observed on the last Thursday in November, which restricted the gift buying season to three weeks.
In 1939, the Retail Dry Goods Association appealed to President Roosevelt and he responded by moving the holiday back a full week to allow for more shopping and at first, the decision caused problems.
According to Mental Floss, people were confused as to which date was the real holiday and the new date earned the moniker of “Franksgiving.” Eventually, Congress acted in 1941, officially making Thanksgiving the second-to-last Thursday in November.
Stores began putting out circulars in newspapers announcing huge sales and so many people would call-into work that employers eventually just gave up and decided to give them the day after Thanksgiving off to do as they pleased; well, employers who were not in the retail business, that is.
In Augusta, Fat Man’s Forest was a must-stop on Black Friday, and the employees in the gift-wrapping department literally worked overtime cutting and shaping bows that would be placed on boxes that would be hidden away until Christmas.
It was police officers in Philadelphia that coined the term “Black Friday” in reference to shopping, according to Britannica, due to the huge amount of traffic congestion around retail stores and “the chaos that resulted when large numbers of suburban tourists came into the city to begin their holiday shopping.”
According to David Zyla, author of “How to Win at Shopping,” one of the first uses of the term “Black Friday” in print appeared in a 1966 issue of the stamp collector magazine, The American Philatelist.
It would not be until the 1980s that Black Friday became almost a mob-like experience, with people beginning to form lines early in the morning before the stores opened up. Hollywood movies satirized the swarming crowds fighting over the last marked-down items and, sadly, it was a case of art imitating life.
In some places, Black Friday looked like an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show,” with people snatching items out of each other’s arms and even getting into fist fights.
In 2008, tragedy occurred at a store in Long Island, N.Y. when a 34-year-old seasonal Walmart employee, Jdimytai Damour, was killed during a stampede, according to the New York Times.
These days, it appears that Black Friday, in terms of people physically going out at four in the morning to wait hours before the store opens, is on the wane.
Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday came along and challenged Black Friday for retail supremacy. During the Pandemic of 2020, hardly anyone felt safe, mask or not, standing in long lines leading to the evolution of people buying most of their Christmas gifts online.
…And that is something you may not have known.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
