Black Friday is a colloquial term for the Friday following Thanksgiving in the United States. It traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season in the United States. Many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices and often open very early, sometimes as early as midnight or even on Thanksgiving.
The day after Thanksgiving has been regarded as the beginning of the United States Christmas shopping season since 1952. The practice may be linked with the idea of Santa Claus parades. Parades celebrating Thanksgiving often include an appearance by Santa at the end of the parade, with the idea that
“Santa has arrived” or
“Santa is just around the corner” because Christmas is always the next major holiday following Thanksgiving.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Santa or Thanksgiving parades were sponsored by department stores. These include the continuing Toronto Santa Claus Parade in Canada since 1905, originally sponsored by Eaton's, and Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade held in Manhattan, New York City since 1924, sponsored by Macy's. Department stores would use the parades to launch a big advertising push. Eventually, it became an unwritten rule that no store would try doing Christmas advertising before the parade was over. Therefore, the day after Thanksgiving became the day when the shopping season officially started.
Thanksgiving's relationship to Christmas shopping led to controversy in the 1930s. Retail stores would have liked to have a longer shopping season, but no store wanted to break with tradition and be the one to start advertising before Thanksgiving. For this reason, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation proclaiming Thanksgiving to be the fourth Thursday in November rather than the last Thursday, meaning in some years one week earlier, in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. Most people adopted the President's change, which was later reinforced by an act of Congress, but many continued to celebrate Thanksgiving on the traditional date. Some started referring to the new date as Franksgiving.
The pandemic Covid-19 also resulted in holiday deals being offered over a longer period of time, even as early as October. Fewer people shopped in person on Black Friday, and most business took place online.
Some online stores invest a lot of money in promotional campaigns to generate more sales and drive traffic to their stores.
Some websites offer information about day-after-Thanksgiving specials up to a month in advance. The text listings of items and prices are usually accompanied by pictures of the actual ad circulars. These are either leaked by insiders or intentionally released by large retailers to give consumers insight and allow them time to plan.
Usage of Black Friday Advertising Tip sites and buying direct varies by state in the U.S., influenced in large part by differences in shipping costs and whether a state has a sales tax. However, in recent years, the convenience of online shopping has increased the number of cross-border shoppers seeking bargains from outside of the U.S., especially from Canada.
In 2019, Adobe shopping data showed that around 39% of the shopping was done through smartphones.