Transcript

Black Friday, a holiday that used to feature what seemed like a nationwide brawl in retail stores, has seemingly vanished. Many people compare what Black Friday used to be to what it is now, and find themselves disappointed that what was once a massive event has become a shell of its former self. But why has this happened? The first clue is in the origins of Black Friday.

Black Friday originally marked the beginning of the Christmas season. With Thanksgiving over, Americans didn't have any other major holidays to look forward to, and retailers were more than willing to kick off the gift shopping season as early as possible. As the hype around the Christmas shopping season became larger and larger every year, more and more people grew impatient, waiting for the season to begin.

In fact, in 1941, the United States government changed the official day of Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday of November, just so people and businesses would have an opportunity to start Christmas shopping early. Now, Thanksgiving struggles to hold the Christmas spirit back, with many retailers unveiling their Christmas lineups long before Thanksgiving, along with smaller sales in early November or even in October. As the Christmas season creeps earlier and earlier every year, consumers no longer have to wait out until midnight to purchase gifts and appliances on sale.

The encroaching Christmas season is not the only cause of the decline, however. What has happened to the once unbelievable deals on products? As the Christmas season gets longer and longer, it becomes less realistic for retailers to offer massive Christmas discounts. Many retailers have begun raising prices on select items during the build-up to Black Friday so that they can advertise larger discounts.

What's made this problem worse is that in recent years, shoppers have reportedly gotten more specific about what they buy. Instead of solely focusing on the degree of the sale, many are simply keeping in mind the items they wish to buy and sticking to it, which while that does make for a more responsible shopping practice, it does break with the holiday's traditional emphasis on competing to buy the most discounted items. And as more and more consumers become choosier about which deals they'll actually buy, retailers are no longer motivated to place items on sale that won't appeal to the maximum number of people.

It's a much safer bet to simply offer flashy sales on a few items that they know will get people in the store, and marginal sales on anything else. According to the BBC, 9 out of 10 prices listed on Black Friday are either the same price or cheaper during other parts of the year. Anyone who's paying attention to prices regularly knows and because of this, buyers who would ordinarily delay shopping in order to take advantage of the holiday are simply buying goods during other parts of the year for cheaper prices.

Globalization has also played a part in Black Friday's decline. As more and more companies adopted Black Friday sales outside of America, it further invalidated the idea that the day after Thanksgiving should mark the beginning of the Christmas season. It made less and less sense that large multinational corporations, the companies that historically offer the sharpest discounts, would time their Christmas lineups based purely on American shopping habits.

Companies often associated with Black Friday, such as Walmart and Best Buy, simply make more money when standardizing their Christmas seasons across countries. That standardization has meant that Black Friday has gotten later and later in the global Christmas season. It's not only when or what people are buying that's invalidated Black Friday, but how people are buying.

The way that people are buying things has changed dramatically in a very short amount of time. For some people, part of the thrill of Black Friday was the mad dash of competing with other shoppers for the best TVs or clothes. But for many, the main attraction was simply the reduced prices.

And as is the case with so much of our shopping habits, the rise of e-commerce has fundamentally changed what people expect when shopping. The vast majority of people are able to purchase whatever they want from large retailers long before they actually enter the store, so there's no need to camp outside of a store to make sure that you're the first person inside. And Black Friday isn't the only major shopping holiday anymore.

Cyber Monday and Amazon Prime Day are essentially the same thing, but newer and more convenient. Why would anyone rush through Thanksgiving dinner so they can camp out in the cold and compete in what seems like the Hunger Games, when the same exact deals will be here on Monday and delivered right to your door? Amazon Prime Day has also significantly reduced the amount of time people need to wait for massive sales. Amazon Prime Day was launched on July 15th, 2015 in order to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Amazon.

Since then, there hasn't been that grueling year-long wait for Black Friday to come around again. In the 9 years since its debut, the company has brought it back every year and it's gotten bigger and bigger in the 19 countries that Amazon currently holds Prime Day. And as of 2024, Amazon ran another store-wide sale in October.

While the trend of Cyber Monday and Prime Day cutting into the hype of Black Friday was present beforehand, the pandemic accelerated it exponentially. Many people were, for the first time, doing all of their Christmas shopping online. And since then, many see no reason to go back to the way it used to be.

The common thread here is that what killed Black Friday is, in a strange sense, the desire for more Black Friday. As Black Friday became more and more of an event, more and more of a holiday in its own right, shoppers began to only care about the sales that seemed to capture the essence of the holiday. In only looking for the most unbelievable discounts, the believable ones began to disappear.

And the concept of Black Friday has expanded into more parts of the year, in the form of e-commerce holidays and an ever-bloating Christmas season. What made Black Friday special, the one day a year where prices were going to drop dramatically, is no longer unique. This trend is also likely to keep getting worse, unfortunately.

As the people who traditionally go out for Black Friday get older, there is no longer a sizable amount of young people to take their place, as young people are by far most likely to replace physical shopping with shopping online. It is also important to note that when people talk about the decline of Black Friday, it has nothing to do with the actual profitability of the holiday. Americans still spend billions of dollars on both Black Friday as well as Cyber Monday, and that number will most likely continue to grow.

What is meant by the decline of Black Friday is in the spirit of the holiday. The mentality of Black Friday is what's gone. We can see this shift in mentality even in times which stores are opening.

It used to be that large stores would open at midnight, so eager shoppers would be able to begin shopping as soon as possible. But now, most stores don't seem to open much earlier anymore, if they open earlier at all. And as strange as it may sound, it does feel like something meaningful has been lost here.

What might have seemed like a quite shallow holiday, only about buying as many things as possible, has been replaced by something colder and more sterile. What used to be a somewhat communal holiday, which was just as much about shopping with family and friends as it was the act of buying, has been replaced by a solitary clicking of buttons, and doesn't seem to be something that will or can ever come back. It's just too convenient to shop online for a significant amount of people to really care that nobody cares out anymore.

Maybe Black Friday will make a comeback in the coming years, but that does seem more and more unlikely every year. But if you do want to bring back the energy of Black Friday, maybe consider going out and shopping with your loved ones this year, instead of ordering online. But for now, thank you all very much for listening to this episode of Magnolia on Mic, and I hope you all have a wonderful Black Friday.