The Origins of Black Friday

Black Friday has two relevant meanings. In history, Black Friday was a stock market catastrophe that took place on September 24, 1869. More recently in the 1950s, police in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Canadian Black Friday sales started in the early 2000s, when the Canadian and U.S. dollar were almost equivalent. This encouraged Canadian stores to offer big discounts to keep shoppers within the borders.