With countless issues plaguing the mainstream media in the present political climate of the United States, it’s easy to overlook one issue in particular that affects the everyday consumer: placing Christmas displays up in big box stores as early as the day after Halloween. Not allowing for the dust to even settle from the spookiest of holidays, from Walmart to Amazon, one may find a plethora of holiday cheer that just seems tacky and out of season. But surely there’s a reason that these retailers continue the cycle of untimely tidings of good will.
A 2012 survey by the National Retail Foundation shows that 41 percent of American shoppers begin their yearly holiday shopping sprees around mid-October, most likely to give themselves a bit of breathing room to manage their deliveries and return any items before the holiday season rolls around. But what’s the point in advertising for the Christmas season when most people are still hanging spiders from their shingles and propping skeletons up on the porch? There must be some event between Halloween and Christmas where people are out in droves stuffing their stocking in preparation for the big X-Mas that will roll around about a month after.
In comes Black Friday. An estimated $7.9 billion was earned by U.S. retailers on Black Friday 2017, according to Adobe Analytics, as well as Cyber Monday which adds an extra $6.6 billion to the total net gain. There is no doubt that Black Friday is the busiest shopping day of the year, and many companies see their largest gains on this day.
Black Friday is historically connected to Christmas, and more importantly, Christmas shopping. A widely known name in American culture, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, began its yearly route through Manhattan on November 27, 1924 according to Time. The parade was an important yearly event because of how lucrative of a marketing campaign it managed to provide for Macy’s, and retail shopping in general. The Thanksgiving Day Parade itself launches the beginning of the Christmas season, and with it, a wave of advertisements and sales that appeal to consumers on a budget.
The most lucrative of these shopping days, the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving Day began to be known as Black Friday. This day became such an important mainstay for retailers that in 1939, merely two years before America’s entry into World War II and two months after the beginning of the war in Europe, a conglomerate of business leaders petitioned then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt to officially move Thanksgiving Day from the last Thursday in November to the fourth Thursday in the calendar month to extend the shopping season by a potential extra week.
So here’s to leaving November for Thanksgiving (mostly), and moving the date of a national holiday so that corporate giants can pad their pockets with a bit more holiday cheer.