Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Black Friday and Cyber Monday but Were Affraid to Ask
Everyone is talking about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But do you know what they are and where they come from? Here's some enlightening:)
"Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the US, which is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.Retailers often decorate for the Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Black Friday is the first shopping day after Thanksgiving and has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season, at least since the start of the modern Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924.
The term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whereas Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, "Cyber Monday" symbolizes a busy day for online retailers. The premise was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores. Although that idea has not survived the test of time, Cyber Monday has evolved into a significant marketing event, in which online retailers offer low prices and promotions.The term Cyber Monday was first used within the ecommerce community during the 2005 holiday season. The term was coined based on research showing that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. In late November 2005, the New York Times reported that "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked."
Now, there you have it:) Enjoy the week-end and happy shopping! You may want to have a look at my store for some special offers: http://www.verredesign.etsy.com/
Take care,
Patricia Wood
Handmade Jewelry and ArtGlass
So why is it called Black Friday? Sounds like something bad happened, at least to my little pea brain.
ReplyDeleteThe origin of "Black Friday" may have 3 origins:
ReplyDelete1) When accounting was all done by hand, accounts with negative balance were written using a red pen, mostly until the day after Thanksgiving, when people started to shop for the Holiday Season. Happy accountants would call it Black Friday as they would start using their black pen to write positive balances again on their spread sheet:)
2) Could also go back to Friday November 11 1887, when 4 of 8 anarchists were arrested and hung after the explosion of a bomb in Hymarket Square in Chigago.
3) Some think it is associated with a financial crisis in 1869.
4) But the earliest uses of "Black Friday" to mean the day close to Thanksgiving come from or reference Philadelphia and refer to the heavy traffic on that day.
There you have it:)