[1966] "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)

Fri Apr 25 04:41:42 UTC 2008

And the historical antecedents, as hinted by the OED's description,
are all negative:   "(b) applied to various historic dates of
disastrous events which took place on Friday, as Dec. 6, 1745, when
the landing of the Young Pretender was announced in London; May 11,
1866, when a commercial panic ensued on the failure of Overend,
Gurney, & Co."  (Perhaps the last here is the one that sagehen is remembering.)

Joel

At 4/25/2008 12:15 AM, sagehen wrote:
>The stock market crash that was first christened "Black Friday" wasn't the
>'29  disaster but an earlier one  (can't remember just when; sometime in the
>'80s or '90s) that I associate (perhaps mistakenly) with Jay Gould. When the
>term was resurrected for the opening of the Xmas shopping season, it struck
>me as odd for a society that worships shopping.
>AM
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>on 4/24/08 6:58 PM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake at taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM wrote:
>
> > James D. Smith wrote:
> >
> >> Rather than a nail in the coffin, I read the attitude of the
> >> police towards Black Friday as the exception that proves the rule.
> >
> > If I'm reading you correctly, I'd like to point out that I see a couple
> > problems with the "red ink to black ink" theory as the origin for this
> > particular "Black Friday."
> >
> > The principal flaw is that --  while Martin Apfelbaum was reporting in
> > January, 1966 that Philly cops were calling the day, with its "massive
> > traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks," thus -- the proposal
> that the term
> > "Black Friday" had to do with putting local businesses "back in the black"
> > hasn't been found (granted, so far) to appear before November, 1981 [1].
> > (The previous earliest sightings, also out of Philadelphia, of "Black
> > Friday" as the day after Thanksgiving date to November, 1975; these also
> > refer to traffic and crowds and omit mention of black ink.)  And, although
> > Apfelbaum certainly did describe his Philadelphia stamp shop as hopping on
> > that Friday and Saturday in 1965 (so it must've been a profitable holiday
> > weekend), it's interesting to me that this merchant chose to present the
> > phrase in this somewhat negative light, as Philadelphia police
> officers used
> > it.
> >
> > That and the problem that "Black Friday" as a general term invariably
> > carries negative connotations, however serious or semi-serious.  To me, at
> > least, its application to those hectic, overcrowded Fridays on Thanksgiving
> > weekends in the heart of Philadelphia would've made for an appropriate,
> > humorous pejorative.  I'm leery of the notion that this was used positively
> > from the outset, as a reference to store owners gleefully watching weekend
> > sales bring their accounts back into the black.  News accounts
> coming out of
> > Philadelphia in the early 1980s [2] seem to bear out my skepticism.
> >
> > Me, I'm betting that offering up the "black ink" explanation was a later
> > attempt to rehabilitate a negatively tinged (however humorous) phrase that
> > just wouldn't go away.
> >
> > -- Bonnie
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> >
> > [1] [From "Shoppers Flood Stores for 'Black Friday'," *The Philadelphia
> > Inquirer*, 28 November 1981, Pg. B04.]
> >
> > If the day is the year's biggest for retailers, why is it called Black
> > Friday?
> >
> > Because it is a day retailers make profits -- black ink, said
> Grace McFeeley
> > of Cherry Hill Mall.
> >
> > "I think it came from the media," said William Timmons of Strawbridge &
> > Clothier.
> >
> > "It's the employees, we're the ones who call it Black Friday," said Belle
> > Stephens of Moorestown Mall.  "We work extra hard.  It's a long
> hard day for
> > the employees."
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> >
> > [2]
> >
> > [From Jennifer Lin's "Good Start, Shopping Season Opens with Crush of
> > Customers," *The Philadelphia Inquirer*, 24 November 1984, Pg. A01.]
> >
> > The strength of yesterday's sales quashed any doubts among retailers that
> > the season would not live up to expectations.
> >
> > "It looks good to me," Peter Strawbridge, president of Strawbridge &
> > Clothier, said. "All the indicators are that this is going to be a good
> > season."
> >
> > The only thing that disturbed Strawbridge was the persistence of people in
> > referring to the day as "Black Friday."
> >
> > "It sounds like the end of the world, and we really like the day," he said.
> > "If anything it should be called 'Green Friday.'"
> >
> > How the day got its name is a matter of debate. Shoppers contend that it is
> > derived from the enormous crowds that make shopping somewhat
> unpleasant. But
> > merchants say it has to do with the fact that the level of sales before
> > Christmas can mean the difference between losses for the year -- or red ink
> > on a retailer's ledger -- and profits -- or black ink.
> >
> > ------------
> >
> > [From Jennifer Lin's "Why the Name Black Friday?  Uh ... Well ...," *The
> > Philadelphia Inquirer*, 30 November 1985, Business, Pg. D08.]
> >
> > The caller wanted to know about retail sales at Hess's department store in
> > Allentown on Black Friday.  But the question touched a sensitive nerve for
> > Irwin Greenberg, chairman of the chain.
> >
> > "That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," snapped Greenberg.
> >
> > Retail sales?
> >
> > No, he steamed, the term Black Friday.
> >
> > "Black Friday is a phrase that's sinful and it's disgusting," a perturbed
> > Greenberg said.
> >
> > "Why would anyone call a day, when everyone is happy and has
> smiles on their
> > faces, Black Friday?" he asked.
> >
> > Greenberg, a 30-year veteran of the retail trade, says it is a Philadelphia
> > expression. "It surely can't be a merchant's expression," he said.
> >
> > A spot check of retailers from across the country suggests that Greenberg
> > might be on to something.
> >
> > "I've never heard it before," laughed Carol Sanger, a spokeswoman for
> > Federated Department Stores in Cincinnati, which is the largest department
> > store operator in the country. "Black Friday out here means the day of the
> > Great Flood in 1937."
> >
> > "I have no idea what it means," said Bill Dombrowski, director of media
> > relations for Carter Hawley Hale Stores Inc. in Los Angeles. "We don't have
> > anything like that out in Los Angeles.  But we do celebrate Cinco de Mayo
> > Day, which is when Mexico overthrew Emperor Maximilian."
> >
> >> From the National Retail Merchants Association, the industry's trade
> > association in New York, came this terse statement:
> >
> > "Black Friday is not an accepted term in the retail industry and as far as
> > retailers are concerned, it is understood to mean the Friday the stock
> > market crashed in 1929." (The first huge drop in stock prices actually
> > occurred on Oct. 24, a Thursday, but the New York Stock Exchange closed on
> > Nov. 1, a Friday.)
> >
> > Retailers, in general, loathe the term. The Center City Association of
> > Proprietors [Philadelphia], in fact, has been lobbying quietly for years to
> > banish the word from the city's vocabulary.
> >
> > "We hate it," said Peter Strawbridge, president of Strawbridge & Clothier.
> >
> > Local shoppers yesterday could not provide any insight into when or how the
> > term got started.  Many simply said that it is a phrase that they have been
> > using for years to describe the day after Thanksgiving.
> >
> > If shoppers are at a loss to explain the origins of the phrase
> and merchants
> > don't own up to it, could it be that the term was coined by ... no, not the
> > media?
> >
> > Yes, the press, suggests Joyce Mantyla, a spokeswoman for John Wanamaker.
> >
> > "The media may have dubbed the term, kind of tongue-in-cheek, because it is
> > the toughest time to shop," Mantyla said. "And we've been inundated so much
> > with it that we have come to accept it."
> >
> > Armchair etymologists -- including retailers, shoppers and reporters --
> > analyze the meaning of the term in several ways.
> >
> > As Mantyla suggests, shoppers might view the crush of humanity in stores
> > with some trepidation, making black, as in gloom-and-doom black, an apt
> > adjective for describing the day.
> >
> > One retailing insider added that sales clerks who have to work that day --
> > and deal with the mobs of customers -- may have come up with the
> > description.
> >
> > David Feld, president of the six-store Today's Man chain, has a novel
> > explanation.  He credits the Philadelphia Police Department.
> >
> > "Years ago, the business of Christmas was celebrated entirely in Center
> > City," said Feld, a Philadelphia native. "You would go to
> Gimbels, walk down
> > to Wanamakers, then go to the stores lining Market Street and Chestnut
> > Street.
> >
> > "There were no suburban malls and the city was where you went to shop. The
> > Police Department dreaded the day because the traffic became impossible and
> > they were flooded with calls about shoplifting. And that made it the
> > blackest day of the year for them," Feld said.
> >
> > A more accepted explanation among merchants, however, is that the black in
> > Black Friday refers to profits. With a windfall of earnings
> coming in during
> > the Christmas season, it is a day when the number crunchers for retailers
> > can put down their red pencils and start using their black pencils to write
> > profits into ledgers.
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: American Dialect Society
> >> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of James Smith
> >> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 9:47 AM
> >> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >> Subject: Re: [1966] "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)
> >>
> >>
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       James Smith <jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: [1966] "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)
> >> --------------------------------------------------------------
> >> -----------------
> >>
> >> Rather than a nail in the coffin, I read the attitude of the
> >> police towards Black Friday as the exception that proves the rule.
> >>
> >> James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
> >> South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
> >> jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
> >> |or slowly and cautiously.
> >>
> >>
> >> --- On Wed, 4/23/08, Bonnie Taylor-Blake
> >> <taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM> wrote:
> >>
> >>> From: Bonnie Taylor-Blake <taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM>
> >>> Subject: [1966] "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)
> >>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >>> Date: Wednesday, April 23, 2008, 5:14 PM
> >>> Because it's never too early to be thinking about
> >>> Thanksgiving and Black
> >>> Friday, I submit what follows as a nail in the coffin of
> >>> that "from red ink
> >>> to black ink" explanation for how this particular
> >>> Friday got its name.
> >>>
> >>> By the way, Google Books provided a not-very-helpful
> >>> snippet view of the
> >>> following advertisement, which appeared in the January 1966
> >>> issue (Volume
> >>> 79, No. 4, p. 239) of *The American Philatelist*.  Thanks
> >>> go to Ellen
> >>> Peachey of the American Philatelic Research Library
> >>> (Bellefonte,
> >>> Pennsylvania); she came to the rescue, locating the text in
> >>> question and
> >>> sending the appropriate PDF to me, all with good humor.
> >>>
> >>> -- Bonnie
> >>>
> >>> -----------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> [This advertisement is in the form of a column written by
> >>> Martin L.
> >>> Apfelbaum, Executive Vice President of Earl P.L. Apfelbaum,
> >>> Inc., of
> >>> Philadelphia.  PDF available upon request.]
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> *Philadelphia's "Black Friday"*
> >>>
> >>> JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which
> >>> the Philadelphia Police
> >>> Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving
> >>> Day.  It is not a
> >>> term of endearment to them.  "Black Friday"
> >>> officially opens the Christmas
> >>> shopping season in center city, and it usually brings
> >>> massive traffic jams
> >>> and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are
> >>> mobbed from opening to
> >>> closing.
> >>>
> >>> This year proved to be no exception -- especially at
> >>> Apfelbaum's.  The pace
> >>> was hectic and the traffic was heavy.  Here's a capsule
> >>> report of how
> >>> Apfelbaum's weathered "Black Friday."
> >>>
> >>> [...]
> >>>
> >>> All in all, "Black Friday" certainly lived-up to
> >>> its reputation.  In fact it
> >>> lasted for two days, with more of the same traffic and
> >>> congestion the
> >>> Saturday which followed.
> >>>
> >>> Is this activity unusual?  A little.  But just stop in on
> >>> any day of the
> >>> week and you will see more action at Apfelbaum's than
> >>> at any stamp shop in
> >>> the world.
>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org