Perhaps because I've never worked in retail, I have never - until this year, for some reason - heard today (the Friday after Thanksgiving, for those of you reading this in outer space via interstellar brainbeam) referred to as "Black Friday."
Now that I have, I will remember never to use the phrase ever again. No one (at least not at Wikipedia...and we all know Wikipedia collectively knows everything) has a clear idea why it's called that, and it seems to have sprung up as some sort of retailers' conspiracy, just to give the day a catchy name. More marketing, in other words.
In other news: "Sweetest Day" is not real; there is no such tradition that wedding rings are "supposed" to cost two months' salary. Hrmph.
Addendum: in researching the term, I found at least five different websites all claiming to be the "official" site for the day. Which reminds me to add "official" to my list of words that mean approximately one of George W. Bush's brain cells more than absolutely nothing.
2 comments:
"Black" because it's the first day the retailers' books move into the black.
That explanation's been discarded as a bit of a myth (see snopes.com), for one thing; for another, it lends support to my claim this supposedly popular term is entirely marketing: no one else particularly cares when (or if, for most individual enterprises) a retailer starts making money. And is accounting really done such that, first, the entire year's expenses are tabulated and, then, income is toted up day by day, so anyone would know exactly what day the retailer "began" profiting? I doubt it.
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