Some say this is because, as the ‘kick-off’ to the holiday shopping season, it is supposed to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The story goes that the sales volume produced by the busiest shopping day puts the businesses books securely into the black (ink that it – where black ink is profit and red ink is not).
This is actually not true though. It turns out that statistically speaking the day after Thanksgiving rarely ranks above the 5th biggest shopping day and is most often 8th or higher.
Others claim that the “Black Friday” moniker dates back a little further as a derisive term used by police and retail workers to describe the horrendous traffic jams and badly behaving shoppers that mark the day.
But this, it turns out, is not the truth either. For the true origins of the term, you have to dig back a bit further to the late 1920s. Here is the story as told by RJ White:
“Laurence H. Black was one of the best floor men in town, working in the men’s department of the old Osberger’s Department Store for over thirty years. He had been with the store since its humble beginnings as a menswear store on Richmond Avenue in the late 1920s. Except for a very brief stint in the service during World War II, he remained with the store as it grew, eventually settling into its later eight-floor retail palace on North Geary Street. Black was a fixture in the store, presiding over the suits, shirts, ties and millinery in his ever-present black suit (“That’s how they remember me. Black suit, Mr. Black, see?”) with a red carnation in the lapel. In a very cutthroat industry, his was one of those rare cases in which he was respected by everyone in the city’s retail trade, regardless of store affiliation. His reputation was even cemented throughout the region, as Osberger’s expanded in the 1950s and Mr. Black would often be called upon to train sellers at the various stores.
But it was the downtown store he loved the most. He was typically one of the first there in the morning (just behind Wharton Osberger) and one of the last to leave, which is exactly as it was on November 27, 1964. Toward the end of his twelve-hour shift, as the massive brass clock overlooking the restaurant in the store’s Grande Center Court read 7:48 pm, Laurence H. Black collapsed, felled by a heart attack. Old man Osberger closed the store the next day and clerks at the city’s other retail palaces wore black in tribute.
The following year, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, all of the employees wore black suits and dresses, highlighted by a single red carnation, with a moment of silence at 7:48 pm, a tradition that carried on year after year and was picked up by many other stores in the city. But, through many consolidations and sales and employee turnover and whatnot, the reason for the tribute and the tradition itself has been lost, save for a few old-timers who still remember. The small Osberger chain was dissolved in the early 1990s and the old parent company is now the owner of a chain of movie theaters in Australia. If you trace back through approximately fifteen mergers and acquisitions you’ll find that the old Osberger stores themselves are all now Macy’s. The central Osberger’s store on North Geary was converted to office space in 2001, after sitting vacant for a number of years.
They’ve kept the central court and clock, however.“
The truth is, these could all be accurate in one way or another. Personally I like the story about Mr Black and will choose it as my reason for calling the Friday after Thanksgiving “Black Friday”.
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