BLACK FRIDAY

In USA, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving (thanksgiving is celebrated the fourth Thursday of November) when almost stores offer promotional sales to kick off the shopping season. On this day, stores use to open very early, often at 4 am or close lately, like Saturday at 2 am. Also virtually all retailers in the country, big and small, offer various sales.

Black Friday isn’t a holiday but many employers give their employees the day off, for increase the number of potential shoppers.

The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian (walking people) and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. Use of the term began by 1966 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975.

By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: that retailer traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black).

Recent years have seen a marked increase in extreme chaos resulting from people's desires to take advantage of Black Friday sales.
-In 2006, a man in Roanoke, Virginia shopping at Best Buy was recorded on video assaulting another shopper.
-Unruly (crazy) Wal-Mart shoppers at a store outside Columbus, Ohio, quickly flooded in the doors at opening, pinning several employees against stacks of merchandise.
-In 2008 a crowd of approximately 2,000 shoppers in Valley Stream, New York, waited outside for the 5:00 a.m. opening of the local Wal-Mart. As opening time approached the crowd grew anxious and when the doors were opened the crowd pushed forward, breaking the door down, and trampling a 34 year old employee to death.

More recently, Black Friday has been exported to nations outside of North America such as Australia and the United Kingdom by major online retailers like Amazon or Apple.