Biggest 360 Week Ever? Tales from Black Friday

[Comrade Tovya]

hayeya_k said:
Can anyone tell me why Black friday is so big ???

 

Well, not real sure, but I think it's one of those odd events that just kind of created itself.  The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the start of the Christmas Season, and Christmas has become associated with gift giving.  When I was a kid, retailers just advertised "after Thanksgiving sales" and as I have gotten older, more and more retailers have started to do it.  And because each of them were competing against each other, they each started dropping prices lower and lower on hot items to drive traffic to their stores.  The term "Black" with any given day of the week added after the term has always been associated with dropping stock prices, so I suppose someone started associating it with dropping product prices (usually the prices on products drop significantly) so it was only natural to view it the same.

Really, Christmas as we know it didn't really start to be the big shopping holiday it is until the late 40s and early 50s.  Retail marketing has kind of created the holiday as we know it.  It used to be about people just getting together to eat with family and some very light gift giving.

I think most events and holidays are created in one fashion or another by market brainwashing.