Deals, sales and discounts can change the way we shop, and Black Friday becomes more noticeable when shoppers are running on adrenaline.
We know it all goes away when the day is over, and many times the over-exuberance of the big day is replaced by the anticipation of the day after Black Friday, the one that follows.
Some say Black Friday doesn’t really turn into Black Friday after the deals end, but there is still much to think about in this shopping season.
A new US study conducted by Project Sentinel measured how extreme the experience can get for both shoppers and stores.
Are Black Friday and Cyber Monday the same thing?
The days that follow are the ones that remain in the festive shopping season, and their names change. Cyber Monday is just one example.
The two days have been to assign separate names, so that consumers do not feel overtaken by a flood of online ads and offers.
Black Friday was originally named after a shopping event held during the Thanksgiving weekend in the US.
The day is given the catchy name because it is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the US, and this is traditionally when retailers expect the biggest volume of business of the year.
In recent years, Black Friday became more common to have events on the day. Online shopping promotions have made the day a day-long shopping frenzy.
What was the thinking behind the name Black Friday?
But store sales were also high over the weekend in the US.
That makes the term “Black Friday” particularly striking.
The tradition of saying Christmas has resulted in the “holiday season” and now the phrase is almost synonymous with shopping.
The practice in the US traces back to when many people would travel to work in the northern US during the winter to work in the potato fields.
An American called Edwin Turner ran an onion farm in 1893. He was one of many who had survived the potato famine and had started building his first farm, planting varieties of onions.
When people would visit his farm to buy onions, many would say the name to be white, eggplant-shaped onion and the name “Sawyer” was used.
Mr Turner added the word “black” to the name in the hope that others would use the word to mean onion and he did.
The word Black Friday came from the Rude Awakening of 1914.
The break from a quiet Canada Day period led to Canadians calling the holiday “Black Tuesday”. The Monday before the new year became known as “Black Tuesday”.
Black Tuesday was actually a light-hearted term that referred to a police investigation that began with an angry crowd outside a shop in Toronto.
The events in Toronto inspired Thanksgiving Day in the US, and the phrase Black Friday has spread.
How many people are involved?
There were six million Black Friday sales and 12 million Cyber Monday sales in the US in 2016.
Both days are expected to be larger in 2018.
Will people stop buying on Cyber Monday?
Last year, e-commerce sales were $11.9bn – a 49% increase on the year before.
This wasn’t just because consumers were keen to get their purchases before the competition – the day was also a rest day for people shopping on the high street.
This was the first year that retailers offered discounts after Cyber Monday, and now they say it is the second busiest online shopping day of the year after Black Friday.
What about Black Friday in the UK?