Black Friday (shopping) the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this was recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday, under this theory, is the beginning of the period when retailers would no longer be "in the red", instead taking in the year's profits. The earliest known published reference to this explanation occurs in "The Philadelphia Inquirer" for November 28, 1981. In 2013, an internet rumor alleged that the phrase originated in the American south before the Civil War, from the practice of
Black Friday (1944) Black Friday (1944) Black Friday was the nickname given by 1st Battalion The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada to the date 13 October 1944. On that day, during World War II's Battle of the Scheldt in The Netherlands near Hoogerheide, the regiment attacked German positions on a raised railway embankment across 1,200 yards of open beet fields and suffered 145 casualties, including 56 dead, among them all four company commanders. Twenty-seven were taken prisoner. One company of 90 men was reduced to just four survivors. By September, 1944, it had become urgent for the Allies to clear both