Black Friday Is Coming

It’s that time of year again—the one where you receive Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. Pandora definitely beat most retailers to it, as did Karen Millen. The temptation is sitting in my mailbox. 🤪

Although I’m still determining whether the sales are actually salesbecause—shhh, I’m not sure I’m allowed to say this—back when I did a short and very painful stint at All Saints, I distinctly remember relabelling the leather jackets at a higher price earlier in the month and then discounting the said higher price on Black Friday. So, is it really a discount? Who knows!

In modern-day parlance, the retelling of Black Friday is often tied to the idea that the start of the holiday season would help put your financial books back into the black, hence the term "Black Friday."

I originally wanted to write about what I had been led to believe for many years: that today’s Black Friday originated from the event where enslaved people were sold at a discount to boost the economy. However, while researching for this article, I found this to be false, which made me feel somewhat relieved. In recent years, I had began boycotting the sale because I was disgusted by the history I thought it represented.

One of the origins of the term is traced back to a market crash in 1869 caused by two financial traders, Jay Gould and James Fisk, who tried to artificially inflate gold prices but instead caused the market to crash.

Another occurrence of the term "Black Friday" dates back to the 1950s and '60s, when police used the phrase to describe the chaos on and after Thanksgiving. Hundreds of tourists would flood cities for the Army-Navy football game, and local merchants used the term to describe the madness of shopping that ensued.

Finally, in modern times, retailers have co-opted the term to commercialise and boost sales—and it’s only getting bigger each year.

Shall I buy myself a new Pandora charm then? - I think yes. 😅