Why Is It Called Black Friday?

Thanksgiving dinner is over, and you're already reaching for your phone. You open your shopping cart. That item you've had your eye on for weeks? Finally on sale. You tap Buy, then keep scrolling. Another deal catches your eye, then another. Your shopping list keeps growing, and somehow, you don't mind.

For shoppers, Black Friday feels like a holiday of its own. So why does such an exciting day have such a gloomy name?

The name has its roots in Philadelphia, where it described the chaos that followed Thanksgiving. Back then, Black Friday was anything but welcome. Some local merchants disliked the name so much that they even tried to change it.

The Friday Philadelphia Dreaded

Picture downtown Philadelphia around 1960. Christmas shoppers are filling department stores, cars are inching through crowded intersections, and football fans are arriving for the annual Army–Navy game.

For department stores, the crowds meant business. For the police, they meant headaches.

The Friday after Thanksgiving marked the beginning of the holiday shopping rush. The Army–Navy football game, frequently played in Philadelphia the following day, brought thousands of additional visitors into the city.

Traffic officers faced jammed intersections, overcrowded sidewalks, and drivers struggling to get downtown. Shoplifting added to the workload. Taking the day off was difficult, and some officers worked exceptionally long shifts.

It's not hard to see why they weren't celebrating.

Philadelphia police were among those who called the occasion Black Friday. The word black carried the negative meaning found in expressions such as "a black day," suggesting trouble rather than anything festive.

And the name wasn't just a story people told years later.

A November 1960 report in Women's Wear Daily used Black Friday in connection with Philadelphia's anticipated post-Thanksgiving traffic jams. By December 1961, a public relations newsletter described how police referred to the difficult shopping weekend as Black Friday and Black Saturday.

Interestingly, the phrase had appeared earlier in a different setting. A 1951 factory-management publication used Black Friday for the day after Thanksgiving because employees were calling in sick, leaving workplaces short-staffed. Researchers haven't established a direct connection between that usage and Philadelphia's shopping crowds.

In Philadelphia, however, the shopping-related meaning was taking hold. And the merchants welcoming those customers weren't particularly happy about it.

The Name Nobody Wanted to Keep

Imagine running a department store during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year. Your windows are decorated for Christmas, customers are coming through the doors, and the city is buzzing with activity.

Then someone calls the whole occasion Black Friday.

Not exactly the holiday spirit you were hoping to sell.

In 1961, Philadelphia merchants discussed the problem with Abe S. Rosen, Philadelphia's deputy city representative. Rosen supported a friendlier alternative: Big Friday and Big Saturday.

The effort was documented in the December 18 issue of Public Relations News.

Big Friday sounded successful and worth looking forward to. Instead of suggesting traffic misery, it celebrated the size of the shopping crowds.

The publicity campaign emphasized Philadelphia's Christmas decorations, department stores, and the appeal of a family outing downtown. Local media helped spread the positive message.

But there was one thing the campaign couldn't accomplish.

It couldn't make the old name disappear.

Journalist Joseph P. Barrett, who had covered Philadelphia's traffic problems, later recalled how the expression survived efforts to replace it.

Big Friday faded away.

There's something funny about a name becoming famous despite the objections of the businesses that would eventually benefit from it. The merchants wanted a friendlier image, but the less flattering name proved difficult to shake.

So Black Friday stayed.

What changed was the story people began telling about it.

How Black Became Good for Business

You've probably heard someone say a company is "in the red." That means it's losing money. When a company is "in the black," it's making a profit.

The expressions come from traditional bookkeeping, where red ink could indicate losses and black ink positive balances.

That distinction offered a much friendlier explanation for Black Friday.

According to the popular version, retailers spent much of the year losing money and finally turned a profit when holiday shoppers arrived. The day was supposedly called Black Friday because stores moved from red ink to black.

It's an appealing story, especially for an event built around sales.

There's just one problem: the timeline.

Philadelphia's Black Friday was associated with crowded streets and traffic problems long before the accounting explanation appeared in print. An early documented example of the red-to-black interpretation appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1981.

The accounting expressions are real. But they don't explain the original Philadelphia shopping name.

Meanwhile, the term was spreading beyond the city.

In 1975, The New York Times described Black Friday as a Philadelphia expression used by police and bus drivers for the busy day between Thanksgiving and the Army–Navy game.

By the late 1980s, newspapers elsewhere in the United States were using it. The name became more widely established nationally during the 1990s as retailers promoted special discounts and shoppers began treating the Friday after Thanksgiving as an event worth planning for.

Eventually, Black Friday moved beyond crowded stores. Online deals joined the tradition, sales stretched across multiple days, and the name spread to countries that don't even celebrate Thanksgiving.

Today, the excitement can start long before Friday morning. Shopping carts fill up, wish lists grow, and people wait for something they've wanted to drop in price.

Yet the crowds, traffic, and long working hours haven't entirely disappeared. What once made Black Friday miserable for the people managing the rush is still part of the occasion, even as shoppers celebrate the deals.

The name survived because people kept using it. Somewhere along the way, they learned to hear something different in it.

And that brings us back to the shopping cart on your phone.

The stores once wanted to get rid of Black Friday.

Now they can't wait for it.

References: Factory Management and Maintenance · Women's Wear Daily · Public Relations News · The New York Times · The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia Daily News · Word Routes · Language Log · Wordorigins.org