We have all heard about Black Friday, the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States.  The biggest shopping day of the year, lines for miles for the best bargains in the stores …

The origins of Black Friday

the outdoor life …

1. Black Friday is traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.  The Christmas shopping season is of enormous importance to American retailers and, while most retailers intend to and actually do make profits during every quarter of the year, some retailers are so dependent on the Christmas shopping season that the quarter including Christmas produces all the year’s profits and compensates for losses from other quarter.
2. On this day, most major retailers open extremely early and offer promotional sales to kick off the holiday shopping season
3. Black Friday is not an official holiday.
4. Why ‘Black Friday’?  Nowadays we explain that the name stems from retailers using the day’s huge receipts as their opportunity to “get in the black” and become profitable for the year. The first recorded uses of the term “Black Friday” are a bit less rosy, though: According to researchers, the name “Black Friday” dates back to Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. The Friday in question sits between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy football game that’s played in Philadelphia on the following Saturday, so although this period was good for retailers, but they were a huge pain for police officers, cab drivers, and anyone who had to negotiate the city’s streets and they called it  “Black Friday” to reflect how irritating it was.

So, if you want to literally immerse yourself in some American culture, use this opportunity –  step out to shop on Black Friday!