BYU NewsNet - Biggest Shopping Day of the Year Now a Holiday Tradition

Black Friday, widely known as the day after Thanksgiving, is a day that many avid shoppers look forward to all year.

In the U.S., Black Friday is the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season, the day when retailers around the country open their doors at 5 a.m., or sometimes even earlier, offering deep discounts on many popular holiday gifts and other sought-after items. Many families make it a yearly tradition to go shopping on Black Friday.

The name for "Black Friday" was coined in the 1970s, and refers to the fact that retailers generally see an upward spike in sales and profits around that time, meaning they are "in the black" financially, according to investopedia.com.

In the past, Black Friday has been recorded as the No. 1 shopping day of the year, although in the past few years, it has been outranked by Christmas Eve and the weekend before Christmas day.

Advertisements for Black Friday are typically released on Thanksgiving Day, but in the past few years, Web sites like www.bfads.net have been put on the Internet weeks before, containing predictions of ads for major retailers such as Target and Best Buy. People choose what they want most, and go to the store hours before it opens to wait in line with other excited shoppers.

Jase Cutler, a BYU student from Boise, Idaho, went shopping on Black Friday last year, and said he had a lot of fun just waiting in line.

"We ended up playing games with all the people around us and making new friends," he said.

While millions of people are out shopping on Black Friday, millions of other people chose not to support it. Movements such as Buy Nothing Day (adbusters.org/metas/eco/bnd/) and Big Box Collaborative encourage people to not support Black Friday and the "big box" stores that promote it.

The Buy Nothing Day Web site calls it "A 24-hour moratorium on consumer spending - participate by not participating." They sponsor activities on Black Friday such as "Credit Card Cut Up" and a "Zombie Walk," where participants dress up as zombies and walk around shopping centers.

If you chose to go shopping on Black Friday this year, remember two things: first, be safe, and second, in the spirit of the season, treat the employees at the stores with respect. Who knows, maybe they'll be able to get you that last hot-ticket item hiding in the back.