Black Friday is known around America as one of the busiest shopping days. Stores announce great sales and deals, and are open all through the night for shoppers to spend upwards of 5 billion dollars, a record number this year.

Sydney Katz, a junior at Oakdale, partakes in Black Friday shopping every year: “Every year I love waking up early and heading to the mall with my mom. It has become such a fun part of Thanksgiving and I have so many great memories from it.”

Black Friday is known as an integral part to many Thanksgiving traditions, although comes from dark roots. The phrase ‘Black Friday” originated from the crash of the U.S gold market September 24, 1869. Two Wall Street financiers worked together to buy up as much as the nation’s gold as they could, By doing this, it sent the stock market into a free-fall and bankrupting everyone on Wall Street.

The most common post-Thanksgiving related event is inaccurately associated with realtors because after a whole year of operating with bad sales (red) stores would earn a lot profits and ‘went into black’ because holiday shoppers spent so much money on the discounted items. Although this is true with the terms ‘red’ and ‘black,’ this is an inaccurate origin story.

The truth behind Black Friday is in the 1950s, police officers in the city of Philadelphia used the term to describe the day after Thanksgiving, when all the shoppers would flood the streets before the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. By 1961, the term caught on and has been used ever since.

Nowadays, millions of people nationwide participate in Black Friday and all of its chaos. It has become a tradition and a part of our culture, along with Cyber Monday.

Matt Hillmuth, a senior at Oakdale, narrates his experience of Black Friday: “Getting the good deals and getting the doorbusters and getting in there early is really exciting. Some people get really into it and it’s fun to people watch.”

More and more Americans partake in Black Friday every year, as stores advertise their low prices and good deals. Many families and people also use the good deals for some early Christmas shopping at a lower price.