Black Friday is back!

Everyone is talking about it! Black Friday, this year 24 November, brings with it incredible discounts, both in brick and mortar stores and online. So, what’s behind this phenomena?
Quite simply, it is a day dedicated to shopping, a synonym for rampant consumerism across the world.
It doesn’t, however always fall on the same day. It is the fourth Friday of the month and coincides with the day after Thanksgiving, essentially marking the start of the countdown to Christmas and all those presents.
But what’s with the name Black Friday? The name was first coined in the 1960s by local police in Philadelphia due to the traffic caused by shoppers and the ink of accountants when the figures went into the black, rather than the red.
Of course, we tend not to think of anything black having a positive meaning – Black Monday, Black Tuesday and Black Wednesday all being terms for massive financial crashes in one way or another. Black Friday is bucking this trend, every year more and more retailers are getting involved and analysts now use the figures as an indicator for Christmas retail forecasts.
The sheer number of promotions available to consumers on Black Friday is simply staggering and to make matters worse in the last few years we now have Cyber Monday the following Monday where online retailers offer discounts similar to those found in store a few days earlier.
It seems consumerism knows no bounds.