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Why Is It Called Black Friday? The Surprisingly Grumpy Origin of the Biggest Shopping Day

Spoiler: it started with traffic jams, not bargains.

By the Buzzuh Team

The short answer

Black Friday got its name in Philadelphia in the 1950s and 1960s, when police used it to describe the huge crowds and traffic jams that flooded the city the day after Thanksgiving. The popular story about stores finally going "into the black" (making a profit) came along later, once retailers decided they'd rather have a happier explanation.

Blame some very tired Philadelphia police officers

Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, the day after Thanksgiving was chaos in Philadelphia. Shoppers poured downtown to kick off the Christmas season, and tourists rolled in for the big Army-Navy football game, held in Philadelphia on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Police officers had to work long shifts dealing with traffic, packed sidewalks and the occasional shoplifter. They started calling it "Black Friday," and they did not mean it as a compliment.

Stores tried (and failed) to rename it

Philadelphia merchants were not thrilled that the biggest shopping day of the year sounded like a disaster. In the early 1960s, some tried to rebrand it as "Big Friday."

It did not catch on. Black Friday was just too catchy, and the name kept spreading as newspapers and TV picked it up.

So where does "in the black" come from?

You've probably heard that it's called Black Friday because it's the day stores finally turn a profit for the year. In accounting, losses used to be written in red ink and profits in black, so going from "in the red" to "in the black" means making money.

It's a tidy story, but it showed up later, in the late 1980s, as a friendlier spin on the name. Historians who've dug into old newspapers say the crowd-and-traffic meaning came first. (And no, despite a rumor that pops up online every year, the name has nothing to do with the history of slavery.)

How one city's nickname went nationwide

For years, "Black Friday" was mostly a Philadelphia thing. By the late 1980s and 1990s, it had spread across the country, and stores leaned into it with early openings and big "doorbuster" deals.

Today it's one of the busiest shopping days of the year, and the sales have stretched into a whole week (or month) of deals, plus Cyber Monday for people who would rather shop in pajamas.

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