Black Friday?

[Ian M]

Any one want to tell me what this black Friday thing is all about.

Ian M

[AlanG]

It's an american thing. Apparently it's a saying for when shoppers go mad for the xmas shopping and put shops balance books into the black from the red

[John]

Like Al says, but black Friday is for high street shops, after that is cyber Monday for online stores, I think the theory behind it is it's the last proper pay day before xmas, but if your like me and leave it until xmas eve then there's no rush

[Guest]

Its the first day of the Xmas sales (normally the day after Thanksiving) where stores give amazing discounts for a certain amount of time, thats what a woman from Florida said when the question was posted on another forum last week.

[Ian M]

Thanks. Both the wife and I just got loads of emails with black Friday this and black Friday that and we had no idea what it was!

Ian M

[Guest]

Thanksgiving day is rather like our Harvest Festival. In the case of Thanksgiving in the USA it was & still is a public holiday. It orginated about the time of the Civil War.

Due to the holiday the Friday after became madness with traffic trains & shops etc all frantically busy to make up lost time. It then was named which stuck Black Friday. The shopping bit was added on I suppose as the begining of the Christmas festival.

Laurie

[stona]

I thought thanksgiving celebrated the early pioneers survival of their passage to the new world.

Some of my less charitable British friends say we should celebrate it here to give thanks that they stayed!

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

1621 plymouth, massachusetts was the first recorded thanksgiving feast in america, (canada celebrates thanksgiving on a different day and date which happens to be columbus day in the continental us).

It's held on the 4th thursday of november.

Similar to our harvest festival it's to give thanks for the end of a bountiful harvest season and 1621 having been a particularly bountiful year is where the tradition began. In 1623 after a poor start to the harvest there would be scarcely enough food to feed half of the 100 ish colonists and the wampanoag indians helped by providing seeds for growing and teaching the colonists to fish, which is where the giving thanks to the native americans part comes in. The whole thing wasn't made a regular day of celebration until the late 1660's.

So black friday is indeed the day after thanksgiving and the first friday before december.