Black Friday refers to the Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the United States, celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. That certain Friday is allegedly marking the beginning of the Christmas shopping season since 1952, although the term "Black Friday" did not become widely used until more recent decades, according to reports.
In specific, The term, Black Friday, was first used in Philadelphia to describe how the day after Thanksgiving features the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur for the shopping purposes.
For the day has become a chance for retailers to make huge profits, many stores decided to open their gates hour earlier than the beginning of the Friday. In other words, retailers, typically, open at 6:00 a.m., but in the late 2000s many had crept to 5:00 or 4:00.
This was taken to a new extreme in 2011, when several retailers (including Target, Kohl's, Macy's, Best Buy, and Bealls) opened at midnight for the first time. In 2012, Walmart and several other retailers announced that they would open most of their stores at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, where in 2014, stores such as JCPenney, Best Buy, and Radio Shack opened at 5:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day while stores such as Target, Walmart, Belk, and Sears opened at 6:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day.
On another hand, the violence that sometimes occurs on that day among shoppers is an undergoing concern for police. According to reports, since 2010, Black Friday violence has resulted in 12 deaths and 117 injuries.
The worst Black Friday occurred in 2008 when a man was trampled to death at a New York Walmart. Despite being 6'5" and 270 pounds, temporary worker Jdimytai Damour died of asphyxiation when crowds stampeded into the store. At least 2,000 people broke down the doors, trapping Damour in a vestibule where he suffocated. Eleven other shoppers were also injured, including a pregnant woman. These incidents give police the right to call Black Friday by a negative name.
Here are some of the famous photos for the occasion:
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