- The day after Thanksgiving has been regarded as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season since the late 19th century, when President Abraham Lincoln designated the Thanksgiving holiday as the last Thursday in November.
- In 1905, Eaton’s, a Canadian department store, organised the first Thanksgiving Day parade by bringing Santa on a wagon through the streets of downtown Toronto. By 1916, this had grown into a parade of seven floats.
- In 1924, Macy’s department store in New York launched its famous Thanksgiving Day parade – as a celebration of the ‘Roaring Twenties’. The parade also served to give shopping a boost on the following day.
- During the Great Depression, in 1939, Thanksgiving fell during the fifth week of November. Retailers protested that this meant the shopping season would be too short – so they petitioned President Franklin Roosevelt to move the holiday to the fourth Thursday of the month.
- In 1941, the US Congress passed a law that made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.
- In the 1950s, people began calling in sick the day after Thanksgiving, essentially giving themselves a four-day weekend. Since stores were open, those pulling a sickie would also get a head start on their holiday shopping. Many businesses started adding that day as another paid holiday.
- In 1966, a story appeared in an ad in stamp collectors’ magazine The American Philatelist – in which the Philadelphia Police Department used the term ‘Black Friday’ to refer to the shopping chaos downtown.
- Increasing shopping activity pushed the Friday after Thanksgiving to become known as ‘Black Friday’ – with the ‘black’ also referring to profit in book entries.