Read th
e following text and say if the following statements are true or false.
1. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November.
2. Black Friday is an official holiday.
3. Many employees have the day off so that they more people can go shopping.
4. Some larger retailers remain open for 24 hours.
5. A doorbuster is a very low-priced item designed to draw people into a sale. (The price can even be so low that the product is sold at a loss)
6. Black Friday is considered the first day of the Christmas shopping.
7. The term “Black Friday” refers nowadays to the period in which retailers go from being in the black to being in the red.
Black Friday is the
Friday following
Thanksgiving Day in the
United States, which is the beginning of the traditional
Christmas shopping season. The term dates back to at least 1966, although its usage was primarily on the East coast. The term has become more common in other parts of the country since 2000. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.
Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees have the day off as part of the Thanksgiving holiday (with the exceptions of those employed in
retailing,
health care, and
banking), which increases the number of potential shoppers. Retailers often decorate for the
Christmas and holiday season weeks beforehand. Many retailers open extremely early, with most of the retailers typically opening at 5AM or even earlier. Some of the larger retailers (depending on the location) such as
Sears,
Best Buy,
Macy's,
Toys "R" Us, and
Walmart have been reported to open as early as
midnight on the start of Black Friday in localized areas and remain open for 24 hours throughout the day until
midnight the following Saturday. Upon opening, retailers offer
doorbuster deals and
loss leaders to draw people to their stores. Although Black Friday, as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season at least since the start of the modern
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the term "Black Friday" has been traced back only to the 1960s.
The term "Black Friday" originated in Philadelphia in reference to the heavy traffic on that day (see
Origin of the name "Black Friday" below). More recently, merchants and the media have used it instead to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red (i.e., posting a loss on the books) to being in the black (i.e., turning a profit).
