VALDOSTA – Even Italians are in on the act. Black Friday has spread far and wide. Italians reportedly are fighting over items in typical desperate fashion and they don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving.

Black Friday either excites you or fills you with dread – or both. Some Americans have shifted their focus from the meaningful – to the material – during Thanksgiving holidays by planning on the “day after” to get deals, deals, deals. How did it all start?

According to a Bloomberg article, the term Black Friday has a “long and varied history.” According to some, managers first used the term in the 50s as a description for the loss of the labor force after Thanksgiving, as many employees would call in sick to snag a four-day weekend. Other reports say it was used in the 60s when the Philadelphia Police Department tagged it to the annual traffic fracas attributed to the day after Thanksgiving.

It seems that the most popular notion is that Black Friday describes how stores saw it as a means of getting out of the red and back in black.

According to the dictionary, and history, Friday, September 24, 1869, was perhaps the first recorded entry of Black Friday, following an attempt by a few speculators to corner the US gold market, which was thwarted by President Ulysses S. Grant’s release of government gold for sale, making gold prices plummet and creating a panic in the stock market. That crash lends an ominous monetary stink bomb to the term, as it attempts today to be seen as a glorious boon of capitalistic consumerism. According to the New York Times, the newspaper first coined the term in an 1870 article in 1860 describing that event.

However you see Black Friday, it’s big, big, business on a global scale.  And as the internet becomes more and more user-friendly brick and mortar businesses will have to continue adapting to these digital times.

And for you rabid local shoppers, whatever you do, don’t spend all your dough because tomorrow is Shop Small/Small Business Saturday.

Shop safely!