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0:56Now PlayingWhy is it called Black Friday? How the day got its name. | USA TODAY
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0:56Now PlayingBlack Friday is one of the busiest shopping days of the year with monster sales and doorbusters. Here’s how it got its name.
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While always tied to pre-Christmas excitement, the moniker "Black Friday" didn't always have a positive connotation. In the 1950s, factory managers used the term because so many workers called in sick, according to Harvard historian Nancy Koehn at Marketplace.
However, the term really caught on in the 1960s, when the Philadelphia Police Department had to deal with massive traffic jams, crowds and shoplifters during the start of the holiday shopping season.
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