What is Black Friday?

Is it a HOLIDAY?

Those are the 2 questions that my daughter asked me while we were having breakfast. Why? Because all she sees in my emails as well as the on the sites I browse online are all about 'black Friday'. I had to explain to her that it's not considered a holiday although I'm sure some people take the day off to take advantage of the offers in stores.

I've been living in this country for more than 12 years but I've never gone shopping on a Black Friday. I know there are some deep discounts on that day but I'm not willing to wake up at the crack of dawn much less line up in front of stores before midnight to wait for the stores to open at the crack of dawn just to shop. Just reading how crazy people get on this day makes me shiver actually. Stampedes, pushing, shoving just to get in a store is not my cup of tea. Some people probaby get the adrenaline rush doing that but not me. I'm hoping our little one won't do that either because to me, it's hardly worth it.

Since I am blogging about Black Friday, I thought of going the extra yard and check Wikipedia for a little background about this much awaited day. Here's what Wiki says about it...


Black Friday is the name given to the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early, often at 4 am, or earlier, and offer promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season, similar to Boxing Day sales in many Commonwealth Nations. Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many non-retail employers also observe this day as a holiday along with Thanksgiving, giving their employees the day off and increasing the number of potential shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year since 2005,[1] although news reports, which at that time were inaccurate,[2] have described it as the busiest shopping day of the year for a much longer period of time.[3] The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.[4][5] Use of the term started before 1961 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black".[4][6] For many years, it was common for retailers to open at 6:00 am, but in the late 2000s many had crept to 5:00 or even 4:00. This was taken to a new extreme in 2011, when several retailers (including Target, Kohls, Macy's, Best Buy, and Bealls[7]) opened at midnight for the first time.[citation needed] In 2012, Walmart led several other retailers in announcing it would open its stores at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day [8], prompting calls for a walkout among some workers. [9]