Let me get straight to the point: I have some opinions about festivities like Halloween and Black Friday being brought here from abroad. Maybe it’s the small percentage of Dutch in my DNA, but is all that really necessary? Okay, I have to admit: I’ve never been enthusiastic about dressing up or wearing face paint. Not even during Carnival. I also don’t like candy or socializing, so dressing up and begging for candy was basically my worst nightmare as a child (or as an adult).
The costumes are barely back in the closet and we’re already being bombarded with Black Friday deals. Of course I have some opinions about that too, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog post about it. However, the Black Friday deals are nowadays turning more into a gray area. The marketing team meets at the beginning of the month.
“What are the plans for Black Friday?”
“We’ll put a banner on the homepage with ‘Black Friday Deals,’ we’ll send out a newsletter with a Black Friday link, and we’ll see how many people fall for it.”
“Good idea!”
And so it happened…
Curious about how Black Friday originated, I looked up where the term came from, and the answer actually surprised me.
“The term first appeared in the 1950s in the United States, but back then it had nothing to do with bargain hunting. In Philadelphia, police officers used Black Friday as a cynical nickname for the Friday after Thanksgiving, because traffic was completely gridlocked. People came to the city en masse for Christmas shopping and for a big football game that weekend. It was chaos: traffic jams, accidents, shoplifting, extra officers on the streets, a nightmare for the police.
Only later, in the 1980s, did the term take on a more positive marketing connotation. Retailers gave the story a new spin: Black Friday supposedly referred to the moment when stores finally “went into the black” after a year of lackluster sales. A clever marketing ploy, of course, but one that stuck.”
Now I’m curious: did you score a Black Friday deal?