This Friday is Black Friday, the day that kick-starts shopping ahead of the Christmas holidays and which, despite being an American concept, is already widespread throughout the world.
From dressing up for Halloween and playing trick or treating to going on a shopping spree right after Thanksgiving in the United States, Yankee culture is already more than widespread throughout the world and Black Friday (which is celebrated today) is proof of this.
For weeks now, retailers have already begun to put some products on sale in anticipation of the Christmas season, turning the month of November into practically a third annual sales period.
However, looking back, we see that the origin of this kind of holiday in honour of consumerism does not have entirely clear roots. One of the strongest theories takes us back to the city of Philadelphia in the United States in the 60s.
Some historians claim that the term 'Black Friday' was coined by local police to describe the chaos caused by the crowds of shoppers who flocked to the city centre to do their Christmas shopping and who coincided with another crowd that came to the city to attend an important college football game.
Over time, traders adopted the name, giving it a positive spin: they associated "black" with profits recorded in their accounting books, which went from being "in the red" (losses) to "in the black" (profits).
Another theory links the origin of the term "Black Friday" to an event that occurred on September 24, 1869. On that date, Wall Street stockbrokers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk attempted to monopolize the gold market by teaming up with Boss Tweed, an influential New York politician. However, the plan failed, causing a collapse in the price of gold and a market crisis that marked that day as "Black Friday."
However, a completely discarded theory that is spread every year as a hoax is the one that claims that centuries ago human traffickers reduced the prices of slaves on Thanksgiving Day in preparation for the winter season. However, according to several historians, there is no data or documents to support this hypothesis.
What is clear is that Black Friday is yet another example of how the tentacles of American culture continue to reach every corner of the planet. In Spain, Black Friday arrived in the middle of the last decade and, like everything that comes from the United States, it was welcomed with great joy by both merchants who saw a new opportunity to make a profit and by customers who saw the opportunity to enjoy a new season of discounts (although in many cases they are not particularly notable).
