[Ads-l] Another faux etymology for "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving)

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Wed Nov 26 16:46:26 UTC 2014


On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 11:20 AM, Bonnie Taylor-Blake wrote:
>
> I see that a recently offered explanation for where the "Black" in
> "Black Friday" comes from has become quite popular, at least on
> Twitter and Facebook.
>
> This version holds that "Black Friday" stems from the selling of
> (black) slaves the day after Thanksgiving.
>
> David Mikkelson, of snopes.com, addressed this last year when it first
> arrived to his inbox.
>
> http://www.snopes.com/holidays/thanksgiving/blackfriday.asp

Though the Snopes example was collected last year, I don't think that
page was created until this year.

In the "What's New" section, it's dated as Nov. 24, 2014:

http://www.snopes.com/info/whatsnew.asp

...but I think it was actually posted a few days before that (there
are Twitter links to it from 11/19) and updated on 11/24.

--bgz

-- 
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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