Origin of Black Friday

Although it cannot be guaranteed with total certainty what the origin of Black Friday is if there are a couple of eventualities that could give rise to this long-awaited event both by buyers and by entrepreneurs and merchants, who take the opportunity to create striking promotional strategies and increase your sales significantly.

At first, the origin of Black Friday had nothing to do with shopping, much less data on slavery as some claim. Rather, it was associated with a financial crisis and the capital markets, specifically an event that took place on Friday, September 24, 1869. At that time, there were 2 Wall Street financiers, one named Jim Fisk and the other named Jay. Gould, who decided to speculate on the prices of gold and began to buy large quantities of gold to make it scarce in the market, with the sole objective of making the price rise a lot and taking great advantage of the price.

However, the government of the United States, seeing that the price of gold rose and rose, decided one day to put 4 million in gold on the market and flood the market, causing gold prices to collapse from one day to the next, having as a consequence the bankruptcy of the finances of many people. At the end of the event, Jim Fisk and Jay Gould emerge relatively intact from this financial crisis that generates a very hard impact on the United States economy in the following years.

Photograph of the slate in the Gold Room in New York, September 24, 1869, showing the collapse of the price of gold.

In the following weeks after the crisis of 1869, stock prices fell by 20% and sectors such as corn and wheat suffered great effects on their economy for several months, the crisis reached such a point that investigations were carried out to the president of the United States at that time Ulysses S. Grant, for supposedly knowing the intentions of Jim Fisk and Jay Gould and having been part of this financial crisis on Black Friday on September 24, 1869.

The other event responsible for the origin of Black Friday

Another event that could be the origin of Black Friday is the one that happened many years later. In 1950 it was very popular and expected by the inhabitants of Philadelphia and its surroundings, an American football game between the naval force and the United States Army and it was played the day after Thanksgiving, a very important national holiday and held on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States every year.

This long-awaited sporting event made not only the inhabitants of Philadelphia but also the surrounding areas gather to enjoy the game, causing the city to collapse, to such an extent that all the policemen without exception had to work that day, they are the ones who start to denominate that day as Black Friday (Black Friday) since they considered that it was a nightmare for them what they had to live in Philadelphia at that time.

Many people who went to Philadelphia to see the game, took the opportunity to go to stores to buy once the game was over, so merchants began to take advantage of Black Friday to sell more, and many merchants even tried to rename such date as Big Friday to associate it more with purchases, but they were not successful.

Years later, in 1981 a Philadelphia newspaper realized that the retail trade operated in the red or loss for much of the year, and realized that Christmas time is the time when stores begin to sell so much that go from red numbers to black numbers and begin to have utility, and Black Friday is constituted as the day where the Christmas shopping season officially begins.

This is why we end up associating Black Friday as the official day where the Christmas season opens and where the last stretch of the year begins. And it is the day when businesses take the opportunity to make discounts that are not seen during the year to be able to sell a large amount of merchandise and thus achieve strengthening their sales