Black Friday

It is the busiest shopping day of the year! It is only 10 am and already many retailer have been open for hours; struggling to crowd control crazed shoppers. Black Friday is the official start of the Christmas shopping rush with door buster sales and ridiculously low prices on the seasons best electronics.

Black Friday has always been an oddity to me. I am Canadian and therefor am familiar with "Boxing Day," deals. In Common wealth countries retailers mark down excess inventory left over from Christmas shopping. Retailers hope to liquidate over stocked inventory to make room for new products. Black Friday in reverse, kick starts the shopping season with unbeatable prices and temporally reduced profit margins for retailers. Black Friday utilizes a volume approach sales method to catapult holiday shopping.

The name, "Black Friday," has many rumored reasons:

- In the early 2000's the massive rush of shoppers caused a system blackout at a major retailer.

- Accounting principles rumor the day as the first day of the year retailers get out of the red (debt) and into the black (profits)

However the official story behind Black Friday is credited to the Philadelphia Police Department in 1966. The term was used to describe the masses and mobs of eager shoppers overflowing retailers and causing massive pedestrian and traffic jams. The term was a vulgar description of the chaos emerging from cash loaded consumers. The Philadelphia Police Department recognised a need for scheduling extra on-duty officers to help calm the riots caused by deal seekers.

Black Friday has officially been the largest, and most dangerous shopping day in the united states since the mid 80's.

 Target's Black Friday TV ads allude to the fierce competition and athleticism required to survive and reign victorious over the Black Friday deals.