Acentury ago, Thanksgiving Day was on the last Thursday of November, which in some years shortened the Christmas shopping season by a full week.
However, during the Great Depression, retailers wanted to capitalize on holiday shopping in any way they could. So, they convinced President Franklin Roosevelt to change the date of Thanksgiving to the second to last Thursday in November. Retailers use the extra time to go on marketing and advertising blitzes.
By the 1950s, sales and discounts, layaway, and crowded shopping malls were the norm from the day after Thanksgiving to right up to Christmas.
While the term “Black Friday” might seem more appropriate for a stock market crash, it came to be used because stores wanted to be “in the black” instead of “in the red” that day.
Black Friday sales started becoming commonplace in the 1990s, with stores opening earlier and earlier on Friday morning to opening the night before to actually opening on Thanksgiving Day.
More recently, a bit of normality has returned to the shopping scene, with fewer lines, fewer camped-out shoppers and less midnight madness. But the day after Thanksgiving as a shopping holiday is here to stay.
Last year, Black Friday was the most popular day for in-store shopping, with 76 million Americans visiting brick-andmortar stores that day. Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, has also become one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
And then, there’s Small Business Saturday, which was in the plans of more than half of small- to medium-sized enterprises in 2023, with sales, deals and even grand openings commonplace. This year’s Small Business Saturday is Nov. 30.
We can’t be certain of the future of Black Friday, but it would be safe to make some general assumptions:
• Black Friday and the weekend after Thanksgiving will remain the busiest shopping period for American retailers
• As the world becomes more globalized, the observance is likely to spread to other countries that don’t celebrate Thanksgiving
• More and more of the online shopping will take place on mobile devices
• As more Americans are squeezed by rising prices, deals and liberal return policies will become essential for retailers seeking to stay ahead of the curve.