Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, unofficially starts the time to start getting ready for Christmas. Black Friday mostly consists of long lines and waiting, but now some people don’t even go because of easier ways to shop online. The day used to be a much bigger event, and still is for some people. Where did Black Friday come from, and is it going to be obsolete because of online shopping?

The reason it was named Black Friday is because in accounting, red means loss and black means profit.On this day many stores would move from the red up to the black because of all the money they made on the day. They would make much more money when they would give a little discount, because people ended up buying more. Due to the increase in sales, it became a tradition for many stores.

Last year on Black Friday According to The Balance, 74.2 million people went shopping. Which is down from the previous year, 2014, were 87 million people shopped.

Black Friday has been getting replaced by the other sale day, Cyber Monday, where people can go shopping from their own computers and know instantly if they can purchase the item they want, without having to get their first and hopefully get one out of the twenty computers available.

According to TheBalance.com, in 2014, about 608 billion dollars were spent on Black Friday shopping, while on Cyber monday, only 2.5 billion dollars were spent. As you can see the market is still there for Black Friday, and people still enjoy going out and spending money.

This year in Massachusetts, JCPenney and Dick’s Sporting Goods opened at 12:30 a.m. Friday. Walmart and Target were opened at 1am on Friday, and  Gamestop was opened at 5 a.m. Friday morning. (Some select stores of these vary.)

Black Friday still is successful, and many great deals are still around. Even if you are trying to save or not Black Friday is very fun. This year alone the sales in retail were around 1.2 billion, making it a record high year according to fashionista.com.

Sources: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/11/18/black-friday-store-hours-massachusetts-open-thanksgiving/

https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-black-friday-3305710

http://fashionista.com/2016/11/black-friday-2016-results