History of Black Friday

We already know, the "Black Friday", the great celebration of consumption in all the cities of the United States and, by extension, half the world. Millions of people bulldozing the big shopping centers, while the web pages of the big one's smoke and burst their zeros of cash registers. Sales records, amazing sales ... the consumer ritual that is repeated every year. But is it something recent? An invention of the Internet era? Not much less.

The term "Black Friday" was not even born to refer to the beginning of Christmas sales. Neither arose in the XX or XXI centuries, it is earlier. According to an absurd hoax that circulates in social networks, this day has its origin in slavery in the United States. Although it has never been confirmed, it is said to coincide with the day after Thanksgiving, when slave traders were sold at a greatly discounted price for the winter season.

Another more concrete fact locates its origin almost 150 years ago, specifically, during the economic crisis that originated on Friday, September 24, 1869. This was the first time that the expression of "Black Friday" was used, after two Relentless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, will fail in their attempt to corner the entire market of gold on Wall Street. These two stockbrokers perfectly represented the role of what was known as "financial buccaneers".

His murky maneuver included an open alliance with Boss Tweed, a famous New York politician. The three were involved in a bribe that included the purchase of some judges. But the plan failed and everything culminated in the fateful "Black Friday" in which many investors were ruined. Fisk and Gould, curiously, escaped significant financial damage during that scandal, but the first ended up being killed three years later.

The term was used again a century later. This time it referred to the circulatory collapse suffered in 1966 by the roads of Philadelphia, the day after Thanksgiving. If we look at this date, which is usually what is indicated as the origin of the American "Black Friday", two years ago the fiftieth anniversary was celebrated.

However, the term was not exported to the other States of the country until 1975. Its commercial connotation, did not come until years later to refer to the sales rebound experienced by the business that day, which was established in the United States as the start of the Christmas sales season. A day in which small businesses managed to transform red numbers into black numbers, through important discounts and promotions and the consequent avalanche of consumers.

As a result, businesses began to stretch their commercial hours to the maximum for the "Black Friday", opening at dawn and closing at midnight. It was so good that, from 1993 to 2001, he occupied between the fifth and the tenth place in the ranking of the days with the most sales of the year. The first place belonged to the Saturday before Christmas Day, until, in 2003, the famous «Black Friday» stole the merit until today. The collection record was reached in 2013, when 141 million people spent an average of 407 dollars each. A total of 57,000 million dollars in a day and only in the United States. In 2014, sales fell moderately, although they reached 50,000 million, marking a dark mark in the sale of weapons: 175,000.