History

Black Friday is a consumer holiday, but this has changed overtime. Originally this day was a day of financial crises. 

As Sarah Pruitt states on History.com,

“The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to holiday shopping but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.”

In Philadelphia in 1950’s police would coin the day after thanksgiving as Black Friday simply because of the chaos that would ensue. Hoards of people would fill the city to go shopping, or to see the football game on the following Sunday. The amount of people and chaos led to officers working prolonged shifts, patrolling more crowds and traffic than normal. This left more people to shoplift and cause chaos. Hence another depiction of financial loss/crises.

Today this “holiday” begins on Thanksgiving evening and concludes on Cyber Monday/following Monday. The event states, it is on a Friday, but truly starts on the Thursday before. Every year the start time/day becomes earlier and earlier. The current meaning of this “holiday” is intended for consumers to get a drastically discounted price on select merchandise, usually for the upcoming Christmas shopping season. This gives the merchandiser a day (or 3) to get out of the “red” on products that are slow to sell, and radically discount them in order to make some profit into the “black”. this states red=profit loss, and Black=profit gain. Hence Black Friday, a day when merchandisers will profit.

Location:

Roseburg, Oregon. We spent 3 days at my mother’s house.

Day & Time:

Our Thanksgiving celebrations spanned from Wednesday evening on the 22nd of November 2017 to Friday the 24 of November 2017. We stayed at my mother’s house throughout the duration of our celebrations.

People Attending:

My aunt Yvonne, Uncle Francis, mother Rebecca and her significant other Dino, my aunt Yvonne, her friend Hollie who happens to be retired chef (who happened to cook our entire Thanksgiving dinner), my husband Ronald, his mother Mary (my mother-in-law), and myself Shaleen as well as my two children Austin and Daphnie.

Walmart the morning of Thanksgiving.