lauriejo

I asked someone who did that, he told me that before the store opened they took it all down and had a friend pick it up and take it home. Sounds like a good friend to me getting up that early.

leonajo

My 20 yr old daughter wanted to go this year, but luckily I talked her out of going :) It is a mad house of crazy women and men shoving and pushing for items that may or maynot be avaliable....Terrible traffic jams, no parking, and people r just crazy........I would rather wait and hit Dillards around mid-January, ahhhh peaceful shopping.

DJ

I don't do the Black Friday sales either, but a couple of years ago, DD and I needed to go to JoAnns for some batting. We had to stand in a very long line to have it cut, but everyone in line was in pretty good spirits, and it was kind of fun. I guess crafters are a pretty good bunch of people. I've only heard of one death occurring, and the stores do work pretty hard at crowd control. Sometimes, for the really hot items, they give people numbers while they are standing in line, so they can get their item without a fight. There are certainly a few that can really ruin the day though. Of course the news picks up the worst cases to broadcast. Everyone getting along and having a fun shopping experience is not news.

Leota

when dds were growing up we had a few gifts for Christmas day but waited for the january sales and paycheck....Always a better deal and extended the holiday for them.

sewgull

A brief history of "BLACK FRIDAY"( for your reading pleasure)


Origin of the name "Black Friday"

Black Friday as a term has been used in multiple contexts, going back to the nineteenth century, where it was associated with a financial crisis in 1869. The earliest uses of "Black Friday" to mean the day after Thanksgiving come from or reference Philadelphia and refer to the heavy traffic on that day.

The earliest known reference to "Black Friday" (in this sense), found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake of the American Dialect Society, refers to Black Friday 1965 and makes the Philadelphia origin explicit:

JANUARY 1966 -- "Black Friday" is the name which the Philadelphia Police Department has given to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day. It is not a term of endearment to them. "Black Friday" officially opens the Christmas shopping season in center city, and it usually brings massive traffic jams and over-crowded sidewalks as the downtown stores are mobbed from opening to closing.[11]

The term Black Friday began to get wider exposure around 1975, as shown by two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, both datelined Philadelphia. The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor," in The New York Times:

Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday" - that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army?Navy Game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion.

The derivation is also clear in an Associated Press article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy," which ran in the Titusville Herald on the same day:

Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. ... "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it gives them."





Many merchants objected to the use of a negative term to refer to one of the most important shopping days in the year.[12] By the early 1980s, an alternative theory began to be circulated: that 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 where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year's profits (the black).[13] The earliest known use, again found by Bonnie Taylor-Blake, is from 1981, again from Philadelphia, and presents the "black ink" theory as one of several competing possibilities:

If the day is the year's biggest for retailers, why is it called Black Friday? Because it is a day retailers make profits -- black ink, said Grace McFeeley of Cherry Hill Mall. "I think it came from the media," said William Timmons of Strawbridge & Clothier. "It's the employees, we're the ones who call it Black Friday," said Belle Stephens of Moorestown Mall. "We work extra hard. It's a long hard day for the employees."[14]



(copied)

sewgull

www.quilterscottagesc.com
The BLACK Friday information was a part of Quilters Cottage, Murrells, S.C. USA, newsletter.

hannajo

I myself don't go out Black Friday because I don't think those kinds of crowds are fun for me. But I know people who absolutely love the excitement of it, moving through the crowds, searching for great bargains. It's a specific breed of person who likes Black Friday. For me, this is a great quilting day!

ptquilts

thanks, sewgull, I was having a hard time believing retailers were operating at a loss for 47 weeks of the year. I believe they make a profit at a pretty consistent rate or they wouldn't be in business.

pookie ookie

Black Friday is what you get when the general populace, marketers and media people are ignorant of history. We've won the trifecta!

miss_ticky2

I couldn't think of anything worse than facing those crowds...I'm thinking that no bargain is worth all that..lol