In case you didn’t notice it’s Black Friday, retailers dropping prices and making it very hard to keep the card tucked away in the wallet. The thing is that whilst consumers know the day means low prices and busy shopping malls they don’t necessarily know where the name is derived from.

So without dragging this one out let’s see what BusinessInsider has to say on the matter:

…retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year’s profits (the black).

See that, now you know what all the fuss is about. Get spending, everyone’s doing it.

[source:businessinsider]