Metumi: Black Friday

Well another holiday shopping season is approaching and as a tradition you are obligated to buy gifts for your loved ones. One of the best days to find good deals, is Black Friday, well, what is it?

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and is the beginning of the traditional Christmas shopping season in the United States. Since Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November, Black Friday may be as early as the 23rd and as late as the 29th day of November. Retailers often decorate for the Christmas season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open very early (typically 5 A.M.) and offer doorbuster deals and loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, 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 "Black Friday" has been traced back only to the 1970s. "Black Friday" was originally so named because of the heavy traffic on that day, although most contemporary uses of the term focus instead on the theory that retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black). (Retailers' profitability varies, but some retailers are indeed dependent on the holiday season for their profits.). Whatever theory is true, you can get very good deals.