black friday why is it called

Black Friday is called “Black Friday” because police and local officials in 1950s–60s Philadelphia used the term for the chaotic traffic, crowds, and accidents that hit the city the day after Thanksgiving, not because of a happy shopping story. Later, retailers popularized a friendlier myth that it was the day their accounts went from “in the red” (losing money) to “in the black” (profit), and that marketing spin stuck.

Quick Scoop

• The phrase “Black Friday” was used negatively by Philadelphia police to describe awful congestion and overcrowded downtown streets after Thanksgiving.

• Shops loved the extra sales but hated the mess, so local officials even tried to rebrand it as “Big Friday,” which never really caught on.

• In the 1980s, retailers pushed the “in the black” explanation in ads and PR to make the name sound positive and profit-focused.

• There are older, unrelated uses of “Black Friday” in history, like the 1869 U.S. gold market crash, but the shopping meaning traces back to the Philadelphia traffic and shopping chaos.

In short: the name started as a complaint about crowds and gridlock, and only later was turned into a glossy story about retailers finally making money for the year.

TL;DR: It’s called “Black Friday” because the post‑Thanksgiving shopping crush in 1960s Philadelphia was so bad that police and city workers dubbed the day “black,” and only later did retailers repackage the name as a feel‑good “in the black” profit story.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.