Black Friday!

It’s 12:00AM and I am setting my alarm for 5:20AM the same day. I lie in bed anticipating the alarm on my cell phone to ring.

Hours go by and I am still unable to fall asleep. I am too excited for shopping the day after Thanksgiving: Black Friday!

There is that one day in the 365 days of a year that people all over the country anticipate: Black Friday. After stuffing their faces with turkey, stuffing, corn, pasta, and all other kinds of food eaten during Thanksgiving, they wait for the remaining hours of Thanksgiving Day to pass so Black Friday can come around. Many of us wake up at crazy hours just to commute to the nearest shopping area for the best bargains, and some of us do not sleep at all. However, where did the term “Black Friday” come about?

Apparently, the term Black Friday came from Philadelphia in 1966, and was the term many people used to describe the traffic that occurred after Thanksgiving Day. In 1975 other states began using the term to describe the period where stores would make profits from people rushing to beat the Christmas shopping crowd, a term also known as “in the black.”

Amazingly enough, despite the recession America has experienced in these past years, people (myself included) still go out of their way to race to the malls to get the best bargain, whether it’s clothes or electronics, or gifts for relatives and friends. I wonder if it’s a tradition that will spread to other countries later on…