What’s Black Friday?

A coworker asked me what exactly is Black Friday? I didn’t know so I decided to do some research.

Black Friday occurs the day after Thanksgiving and has historically been one of the most important shopping days of the year as this marks the start of the holiday season. The narrative created by retailers and merchants was that they traditionally operated at a loss for most of the year but Black Friday is when they begin to profit. In accounting, negative amounts were written in red ink while positive amounts were shown in black ink. Thus, Black Friday is when businesses move from the “red” and begin to turn a profit.