JACOB GOCHIS

As November comes and goes, many Americans are preparing for a national holiday that gives us time to reflect on what we are truly thankful for what we have and celebrate good ol’ American values such as family, and generosity. The weekend following this holiday, 174 million Americans will participate in a shopping frenzy that marks the beginning of the holiday gift shopping season and emphasizes consumption.

(Image from Google)

I was interested in the history of this retail celebration that today gives us news stories and videos of people trampling each other for the newest Xbox. This article helped guide me through the history of the holiday and allowed me to see its development and adaptation to the times. Within this post I will explore the mingling of business, state, and society as retailers encouraged consumers to view the Friday after Thanksgiving as the time to start shopping.

The modern day Black Friday came about as a result of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. While the parade was originally adapted from a Canadian retail shop’s idea of a parade, and was meant as a celebration of Macy’s success rather than an advertising opportunity, their first parade in 1924 gave Macy’s increased sales the next day and they chose to continue the tradition. This led to the recognition between stores that the Friday after Thanksgiving would mark the official beginning of the holiday season.This trend was only furthered as workers would take the Friday after Thanksgiving off in order to have a four day weekend and get a head start on holiday shopping. Employers embraced this rather than fighting the trend and Black Friday seemed to have its official recognition.

Then there’s Black Friday wasn’t always a sweet sound for capitalism, the earliest use of the name was in reference to a stock market crash caused by two speculators that wrecked havoc on the nation’s economy and prices. Later the name was re branded for the purpose of creating a better public image as another source I looked into describes:

No wonder retailers wanted to make the name “Black Friday” mean something positive. To them, the Friday after Thanksgiving was one of the most profitable days of the year. To compensate, they decided to follow the adage, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Retailers changed the name to reflect their success. Accountants use black to signify profit when recording each day’s book entries.

One more interesting fact, Thanksgiving’s location on our calendars might well be thanks to retail stores trying to get a head start on holiday sales. In 1939, Thanksgiving happened to fall on the fifth week of November which retail stores worried would lead to decreased sales. They petitioned President Roosevelt to change it to the fourth Thursday instead. The plan fell through in the end due to the late action by Roosevelt, however in 1941, Congress officially recognized the fourth Thursday of every November.

While these may all seem like trivia facts on Black Friday, I believe they show just how businesses have impacted society with their influence. We have studied in class how in the 20th century, businesses began pushing increased consumption on American society. This is reflected by the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade showing off advertisements and essentially functioning as a billboard. The name re-branding reflected the idea that it was a consumers job to fuel the economy and help generate profit for retailers. These changes reflect the interaction between business and society, but I find the story of Thanksgiving’s official date most compelling. We see business asking the state to determine the day of a societal holiday in order to maximize revenue.

One would think that Thanksgiving and Black Friday would be separated on the calendar due to their differing values behind it, but business has created a tradition of consumption immediately following our day of thanks. This is a blatant example of businesses influence on our society and perhaps its worth looking into a few of our other traditions to see just how many of them are influenced by a corporate spirit.