LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) – Black Friday has become an American institution and a holiday in its own right. It’s something tens of millions of Americans look forward to every year.
Ashley Hernandez of Lafayette said she plans to go shopping on Black Friday.
“Because I love to shop and I got money,” she laughed.
“I think it’s just become an event,” said Linda Kirby of Lafayette. “I think it’s really just the people look forward to that as much as they do the turkey.”
University of Louisiana at Lafayette economics professor Dr. Tony Greco said Black Friday didn’t use to be like that.
“The Christmas season started, I guess, officially on that Friday after Thanksgiving but it was no big deal, no designation for it or anything like that,” he explained.
If you go online you’ll find lots of stories about the history and origins of Black Friday.
The National Retail Federation tells News 10 that during the Great Depression in the 1930s a group of merchants in New York City got together and came up with the phrase Black Friday to encourage people to shop for the holidays.
Another story puts the origin in Philadelphia.
“Sometime in the 1960s in Philadelphia the day after Thanksgiving the traffic got so bad that somebody in the police department said, ‘oh it’s Black Friday,’ and then it kind of stuck I guess after that,” Greco said.
The National Retail Federation said the Philadelphia story could be true, too. That’s because there were pockets of the country doing Black Friday-type sales.
Linda Kirby said the day after Thanksgiving was a lot different when she was a kid.
“You went window shopping at all the department stores and you looked in the window. They had the animated things going on, but no, no Black Friday,” she said.
The National Retail Federation said it was sometime in the 1980s when the whole country got on board – leading to what we now know as Black Friday.
Stores like Toys R Us and Sears are no longer around, but Greco said shoppers have found other places to go.
“There’s always alternatives to fill those gaps,” Greco said. “So those numbers I don’t think would have changed very much at all. They just go to some other place, that sort of thing.”
Black Friday is now considered a five day event, starting on Thanksgiving and ending with Cyber Monday. The National Retail Federation said it coined the term Cyber Monday in 2005.
