Here’s what famous ‘Black Friday’ means

Well, today, Friday, November 26, 2021, is Black Friday, a day after the US Thanksgiving holiday that allows people to shop for items at discounted prices. It is celebrated every year, in November, mostly the last Friday to usher people into the Christmas season. It is however seen as the beginning of the shopping season for Christmas.

According to Thesaurus.com, “the true origin of the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday lies in the sense of black meaning “marked by disaster or misfortune. In the 1950s, factory managers first started referring to the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday because so many of their workers decided to falsely call in sick, thus extending the holiday weekend.”

“About 10 years later, Black Friday was used by Philadelphia traffic cops to describe the day after Thanksgiving because they had to work 12-hour shifts in terrible traffic. Visitors flocked to the city to start their holiday shopping and, sometimes this popular shopping day coincided with the annual Army–Navy football game. The term caught on among shoppers and merchants in Philadelphia, and from there it took off nationwide.”

“The 1980s brought the mythology of Black Friday as we know it today. While the phrases in the black and in the red are used in the business world to describe profits and losses, this explanation for one of the busiest shopping days of the year only came about in the 1980s, about 20 years after the phrase Black Friday was in regular use.”

On Black Fridays, various shops all over the world, offer discounts to customers to allow them to shop as many products as they want in anticipation of the Christmas festivities.

Whereas patrons and consumers are excited about the discounted prices, sellers are equally enthused about the quantity of sales they are able to make.

Prices of items ranging from clothes, bags, shoes, kitchenware, food etc. are heavily slashed for customers to have only the best shopping experience.

In Ghana, Black Friday has gained popularity in the past years as online and digital businesses are taking centre stage even after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.