Did you survive Black Friday? If yes, congratulations. If not, no need to respond.
The history of “Black Friday” is not black or white. In fact, it’s about a grey as “Fifty Shades of Grey,” about as black as the darkest of rumors…or facts, and about as white as commerce and the media can paint it.
History, up until nearly the end of the 20th century, had three versions of “Black Friday,” but history is being changed, embellished or eradicated, to conform with our more politically correct, kinder and more caring society today. It is difficult to understand why a kinder, more liberal and politically correct society endures, ignores or tolerates the pushing and shoving, destruction of property, disruption of business and traffic and the traumatization of people’s lives this day.
In the early 19th century, after the harvest season ended, traders sold their slaves (often the day after Thanksgiving) to other owners and lumbermen who needed slaves for their winter work. This fact (or fiction) remained a part of history until it was omitted from text books during the past few decades, and completed erased this past decade.
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, people who were tired of working their butts off during WWII would call in sick the day after Thanksgiving in order to enjoy a 4 day holiday. Business owners referred to this as Black Friday.
By 1961 the term “Black Friday” (and “Black Saturday” as well) was being commonly used in a derisive sense by Philadelphia police, who had to deal with the mayhem and headaches caused by all the extra pedestrian and vehicular traffic created by hordes of shoppers heading for the city’s downtown stores on the two days after Thanksgiving. (Snopes.com, 20Nov2016)
Today, the popular alternative explanation for the origins of “Black Friday” is that it is the day on which retailers finally began to show a profit for the year (in accounting terms, moving from being “in the red” to “in the black”) after operating at an overall loss from January through mid-November. So Black Friday has become the most popular, frenzied shopping day of the year.
Black Friday is not a “racist” term and has nothing to do with those shopping, although it is interesting to learn that 84% of Blacks shop while only 48% of Whites shop on “Black Friday.” So, if you did venture out on this marvelous or treacherous day, (depending on your opinion) hopefully you don’t have a black eye, or a red scar or even white bandages as proof you risked your life on “Black Friday.” Oh yeah… here is another thing you may not know: Overall, store security personnel is increased by an average of 30% on Black Friday, yet theft increases almost 70%… but what the heck… things weren’t worth as much on “Black Friday!”
Cheers to all you survivors.. and to those wise enough to wait until the ‘Day After Christmas” to get the really GOOD DEALS.
