Teen Vogue
November 2018

Black Friday, Explained

In one episode of The Simpsons, marketing executives at a department store invent a fake holiday to boost sales. Thankfully, Love Day and Christmas 2 didn’t catch on outside of Springfield, but real-life nonevents have become absurdly commercialized — to the point where Hallmark published a press release earlier this year just to say it didn’t invent artificial holidays.

Consider Black Friday, a blockbuster sales event started in the United States that falls each year on the day after Thanksgiving. Despite popular opinion, the day, which is celebrated from Australia to Japan, didn’t begin in a boardroom as a plan to drink up all your money — though you wouldn’t know it from the way people fight tooth and nail for cut-price televisions. The day of deals hasn’t been around for that long, but has changed in its time: It now stretches well over a week, heralding the busiest shopping period of the year with deep discounts, hype, and hysteria. The National Retail Federation estimates that more than 164 million plan to shop this weekend, with 116 million buying on Black Friday alone. To put that into perspective, that’s the same number of people estimated to have voted in 2018’s midterm elections. So where did this celebration of commerce come from?

Since the 1800s, stores have been holding post-Thanksgiving sales to take advantage of large crowds still off work from the holiday, but they didn’t use the name Black Friday. It’s thought the phrase was first used in this context in Philadelphia in the 1950s, dubbed by police, bus drivers, and retail staff to describe the gridlock as bargain-hungry shoppers and football fans descended on the city. Cops had to work overtime to deal with the crowds and chaos, and shoplifting spiked in the scurry. The name stuck at a local level and slowly spread throughout the U.S., but wasn’t celebrated and instead held a negative conntation.

TRENDING VIDEO

Justin Bieber's Official Teen Vogue Cover Shoot

In fact, one of the earliest uses of the term “Black Friday” appears in a factory management newsletter from 1951, as employers noticed a trend of absenteeism the day after Thanksgiving. With factories suspiciously half-full, businesses joked of a Black Death-style pandemic every year, nicknamed “Friday-after-Thanksgiving-itis.” Many companies made Black Friday a paid holiday to discourage the hooky-playing.

In the 1980s, when “greed is good” mass consumerism swept America, savvy advertisers seized on the term’s potential to exploit our often irrational responses to pressure. To shine a light out of the era’s recession, it was said that Black Friday suggested the notion of going from “red to black” — i.e. out of debt and into profit, as many stores saw a huge surge in sales. President Ronald Reagan’s economic policy relied on a combination of tax cuts and consumer spending, and it’s around this time that the tone surrounding Black Friday shifted from one of frustration to one of opportunity. This year, forecasters predict we'll spend a combined $90 billion over the holiday weekend, with the average American adult dropping $480.

So the bonanza is pretty serious business for the economy. It can feel a little as if Black Friday is like the Frankenstein’s monster of consumer capitalism. The nickname Black Eye Friday and the chilling website Black Friday Death Count paint a grim picture of the mob mentality it fosters, with dog-eat-dog scuffles sinking deep into the culture around the mid-2000s, when retailers upped the ante with time-limited deals. Violent brawls and fatal stampedes are now a frightening normality, and shootings and stabbings — while rare — have made headlines.

Ironically, the best deals are often found in the lead-up to Black Friday, not on the day itself. Genuine discounts can save you up to 23%, but it’s not uncommon for companies to slyly inflate price points throughout the year just to create the illusion of a discount come November.

News like this somewhat sours the joy of saving a buck, and it’s hardly a consolation to learn what we’re spending our money on. Tech and toys always top the list, while Target’s giant teddy bears are wiped from the stores at a rate of 600 per minute. November 23 might also be your day if you’re in the market for a crying Kim Kardashian phone case, Nicholas Cage print pillow, or earrings shaped like Hot Sauce. But it’s not just novelty items that are in high demand: One statistic shows that firearm background checks hit a record high on Black Friday 2017, according to data published by the FBI.

Black Friday has evolved with the rise of e-commerce. When smartphones put shopping at our fingertips 10 years ago, digital giants began to launch sales before the turkey was even in the oven. While you can now shop without shame wearing gravy-stained sweatpants, even shopping from the couch isn’t entirely anxiety-free. Businesses pay good money to prey on the fear of missing out, launching lightning deals that are sometimes only live for minutes at a time, achieving impulse sales that would be logistically impossible in brick-and-mortar stores. The disorientating carousel of price cuts and on-screen countdowns have been carefully orchestrated to tap into our responses to stress and rivalry.

The threat of being undercut by big online retailers means it’s virtually impossible for a store to bypass Black Friday. It can be like a rock around the neck for small businesses that struggle to absorb the cost of selling stock cheap, during what should be their most profitable season, but if they don’t, customers will go elsewhere. But for those without the day off work, like many blue-collar workers, Black Friday marks a two-week grind of intense labor for warehouse workers, cashiers, and couriers, who are often poorly paid or hold precarious contracts with their employers. Year on year, in the U.S. and across the globe, staff from fulfillment centers to big-chain stores have staged walk-outs to campaign for better working conditions and wages over the peak period.

Consumers can bolster backlash against corporate greed, standing with boycotts like Buy Nothing Day or extending thanks by helping a cause they care about on Giving Tuesday. What’s more, our frivolous impulse buys are absolutely horrible for the planet. There are plenty of ways you can add value to the world through your time, money, and kindness. You could donate to Native American activist organizations, or check out our list of five fulfilling ways to spend your Friday should give you some ideas. What’s more, you’ll probably save a whole lot of cash.