Ankur Nikam
The history, the hype, and the chaos behind the world’s biggest shopping day
Falling on the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US, Black Friday officially signals the start of the Christmas shopping season.
In the 1960s, Philadelphia police began calling it “Black Friday” because the day brought overwhelming crowds, traffic jams, and chaos across the city.
Retailers later embraced the name, giving it a positive twist, this was the day their accounts moved from being “in the red” (loss) to “in the black” (profit).
For decades, people lined up at 4 AM, sometimes overnight, for massive doorbuster deals, often leading to long queues, stampedes.
Today, online spending dominates. We've moved from camping on sidewalks to refreshing web pages.