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Black Friday May Kill Us All
Unless you are a hermit, who has only this moment emerged from seclusion (welcome, by the way), you will know that Black Friday is upon us. My social media is awash with a thousand variations on the theme of DMO (Don’t Miss Out). In shop windows, the promise of bargains jostle with the Christmas decorations, (which in England were here in October despite the space demands of Halloween).
Black Friday emerged in the Eighties as a branding by marketeers of what was already American practice. The day after Thanksgiving was a day firmly associated with intense shopping and thus the start of the Christmas retail season. The story goes that many stores had ledgers with predominantly red columns indicating losses in the preceding months and that this Friday’s takings marked the moment the tide turned to Black or profit. In the serendipity of capitalism, this was a moment to delight consumers, who were now promised a frenzy of discounting to further boost their retail therapy. The bargains would soon be gone, so don’t miss out was the message.
Better documented is the use of the term Black Friday by police in Philadelphia in the Fifties. The combination of crowds attending the Army v. Navy game with the hordes of holiday shoppers meant the Friday after Thanksgiving was a time when all officers were needed; gridlock threatened; and tempers frayed. There were usually some…
