[1966] "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)
James Smith
jsmithjamessmith at YAHOO.COM
Fri Apr 25 16:46:02 UTC 2008
Point well made; I wasn't accounting for the date or timing.
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 Thu, 4/24/08, Bonnie Taylor-Blake <taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM> wrote:
> From: Bonnie Taylor-Blake <taylor-blake at NC.RR.COM>
> Subject: Re: [1966] "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008, 4:58 PM
> 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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> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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> http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society -
> http://www.americandialect.org
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