Growing up, Thanksgiving was a huge family tradition for many American households. One of the biggest annual get-togethers of the year, if not the biggest. It was the time for families to come together, recognize what they’re grateful for, and eat lots of home-cooked food before the flurry of the holiday season. A rush that started the very next day after Thanksgiving.

The term Black Friday was originally coined in Philly in the 50s/60s to describe the day after Thanksgiving for two reasons - traffic and calling out of work. The Philadelphia police force is thought to have used the term first, because of the heavy traffic, increased crime, and big crowds that always followed Thanksgiving, requiring extended hours for officers. However, while the police were working overtime, nearly everyone else was calling in sick to extend their holiday. So, shortly after the police started calling it “Black Friday”, factory managers started using the term as well. 

With most folks being off from work, many turned to shopping for the gift-giving holidays. Stores that had been functioning at a loss (i.e.,“in the red” thus far for the year), suddenly found themselves headed toward “the black” thanks to holiday shopping. And thus, Black Friday as we know it was born! Since then, it’s developed into the mass shopping holiday that we’ve come to embrace. In fact, it’s become such a cultural phenomenon that we’re beginning to wonder, has Black Friday and its big shopping sales become a bigger deal than Thanksgiving itself? 

For some of us, preparing for Black Friday, and the entire suite of “BFCM” holidays such as Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, has become as big of an ordeal as preparing for Thanksgiving. We make lists and check them twice. Up until very recently, this also might also have meant leaving Thanksgiving Day gatherings early just so you could get a decent spot in line for midnight store openings. This rush to the store in itself was a tradition for many families who scrambled to find rare gifts for each other at deep discounts. Now, we might still rush to grab gifts, but there’s the option to do it from the safety of our couch, maybe even while catching some college football. Regardless, many companies still give their employees the day off on Black Friday, either because they know they’ll call out like the factory workers did all those years ago, or because they know we’re all going to be too busy online shopping to be productive (except for me, of course). 

Because of the preparation and the time off, Black Friday does seem to have become a holiday of its own. In fact, over the years, participation in Black Friday has continued to increase. Over the last 10 years alone, spending has increased from $1.93 billion to $9.80 billion (Oberlo). Participation has been on a pretty steady increase from 2005 when 132 million Americans shopped to last year (2023) when we hit over 200 million shoppers for the first time (NRF). These numbers are only expected to increase in 2024. But in the midst of all of this shopping excitement, is our participation in Thanksgiving changing?

We’re still eating turkey and stuffing, playing games with the family, and hoping that that one aunt didn’t cook anything this year. We watch the president pardon a turkey, turn on the parade, and admire the floats, then eagerly await kickoff for the traditional Thanksgiving Day NFL games. For the next week or so, we’re all probably subsisting on leftovers, trying our hardest to make a leftover sandwich as good as Monica Geller’s. However, participation in Thanksgiving seems to be declining due to many factors including increased costs. The number of estimated turkeys consumed over the last 10 years has held steady at 46 million, despite our population steadily increasing over that time period (Fox13, Smart Asset). Travel for Thanksgiving does appear to be going up, but not at a rate of increase we might expect for our growing population (Bagsaway). All of this is to say that participation in Thanksgiving is holding pretty steady, but with the growth of our country, we may see these numbers trending down soon. 

Maybe it’s not that Thanksgiving is becoming less important, but involvement in its traditions have been changing over time. As much as the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping holidays seem to be going longer every year, so does Thanksgiving. “Friendsgivings” have started taking up nearly the whole month of November and into December, as friends gather for a Thanksgiving-type meal so they can celebrate together, or sometimes even as a replacement Thanksgiving for those who live too far away to easily travel to family on Thanksgiving itself. 

Even if your participation in the holiday is limited to Thursday itself, there’s a whole lot more to pack into your day now than there used to be. Every year more and more people sign up to run (or walk) early morning Turkey Trots. Might as well get active before the turkey coma hits, right? But, once it does hit, there’s hours and hours of football available for you to watch! The games themselves have certainly become a tradition in their own right over the years. There’s usually at least one relative asking to eat at a certain time, so they don’t have to miss their favorite team play.

Traditions shift and change over time, sometimes to accommodate family members, and sometimes to account for the frenzy of shopping holiday. Black Friday is becoming, if it isn’t already, another tradition, but that doesn’t mean our Thanksgiving traditions are going away. In fact, Black Friday wouldn’t exist without Thanksgiving. And, though Black Friday sales have been adopted internationally without the need for Thanksgiving celebrations, the two holidays are forever coupled here in the USA. As a retail brand that participates in the “BFCM” sales events and whose team members celebrate all the traditional Thanksgiving activities, this connection is especially evident to us.

While Black Friday might continue to grow, it’s forever rooted in a lot of history. It cannot be separated from its origin. And that nostalgia and connection to our roots is what we’re all about here at LV! However, there’s plenty of room for new traditions too, whether they’re on Thanksgiving day itself, or over the days immediately following it!