“Black Friday”  refer to the day after Thanksgiving. It referred to the practice of workers calling in sick on the day after Thanksgiving. In order to have a four-day week-end. However, this use does not appear to have caught on.

Around the same time, the terms ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Black Saturday’ came to be used. It was done by the police in Philadelphia and Rochster. They described the crowds and traffic congestion to be accompanied by the start of the Christmas shopping season. In 1961, the city and merchants of Philadelphia attempted to improve conditions.

 

The use of the phrase spread slowly, first appearing in The New York Times on November 29, 1975. It still refers specifically to “the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year” in Philadelphia. Although it soon became more widespread.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1985 that retailers in Cincinnati and Los Angeles were still unaware of the term. Local retailers wanted to draw in shoppers that day. But they disliked the term because of the connotation of the word “black” in front of a day of the week, which historically has been used to mark unpleasant events.

One was ‘Black Tuesday’ the day of the stock market crash of 1929, and another, ‘Black Monday’, the day in 1987 when the market lost more, on a percentage basis, than on any day in 1929. In more recent decades, global retailers have adopted the term and date to market their own holiday sales.

Businesses later reclaimed the name Black Friday, saying that the day was when stores’ books went from red ink to black.