It's Black Friday, well, this Friday.  Did you ever wonder where the whole Black Friday "thing" came from?

Well, I did, so I did a little investigating.

Pretty interesting all in all.

Some once believed that the term, "Black Friday," originated with the practice of selling off slaves on the day after Thanksgiving.

The origins of the term "Black Friday" have become somewhat obscured in the midst of time.

According to Snopes.com, that is not true. "Black Friday" is the term for the phenomenon that takes place in the U.S. on the day after Thanksgiving, when millions of consumers, who get the day off from work or school, crowd into stores for what is traditionally considered the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. That has been happening since the early 2000s.

This will surprise some, but Black Friday is not an official holiday. Some states observe the day after Thanksgiving as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day.

Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the following Friday off, which, along with the following regular weekend, makes it a four-day weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers. It has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year.

The earliest known use of the term "Black Friday" stems from 1951 and referred to the practice of workers calling in sick on the day after Thanksgiving so they would have four consecutive days off. As common practice, employers were not offering that Friday as a paid day off.

Does your employer give you the day after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, off?

At my last radio job, before coming back to Cat Country, we had to work on that Friday or take a vacation day.

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