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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

I remember the day after Thanksgiving being a day my relatives (at least the ones interested in shopping in malls, etc) being excited about going shopping. Lots of people had the day off, originally I think "black Friday" just meant that stores were really busy.

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It literally meant the day stores would go into the "black" because many stores would be in the red for the year overall until they sold so much on that one day they'd turn a profit for the year or go into the "black" on their accounting.

You are repeating a fairy tale some marketers invented to explain the black friday name.

Black friday is a term for a day when something horrible ocurs, the term was applied to the day after thanksgiving by police in an american city because of the difficulty in maintaining crowd control and it caught on.

If you're so certain your etymology is the right one, you should probably be able to name the city.

Philadelphia and Rochester. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)#Origin...

Well guess what? Language and terminology change over time

While black Friday is a reference to a single day in history. It is also a reference to the annual shopping for Christmas. Which has also changed. It really was the start of the shopping season but alas, you cant stop change

No stores operate at a loss for 10 months out of the year.

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