Brace yourself – It’s Black Friday

BLACK Friday is the first Friday after Thanksgiving, marking the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

“Thanksgiving? But that’s an American holiday,” you may say. And you’d be right. However, Black Friday, although an American tradition, has made its way to South African shores in recent times and more and more retailers are offering Black Friday promotions.

This year, Black Friday falls on November 25 and is likely to draw massive crowds on the hunt for great deals and discounts at participating retail outlets, with shopping hours being extended, extra stock being brought in and prices being slashed to accommodate. Several online shopping sites are also believed to be cashing in on the Black Friday benefits.

There are many theories regarding the origins of the term ‘Black Friday,’ some rather sinister in their implications, but the most popular one stems back to the mid-1960’s in America, according to the Huffington Post, as well as other sites, when Philadelphia police coined the phrase to describe the massive overcrowding and general mayhem caused by enthusiastic shoppers.

“…So at some point in the 1950s or 1960s – some put the date exactly at 1966 – the Philadelphia Police Department started to refer to the day after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday,” with the unrealistic hope that people would find the whole shebang distasteful and opt out of the collective consumer madness. At a minimum, it was a derisive way to describe an unpleasant day in the life of a Philly cop…”

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