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Questions
1. What is “Black Friday”? How did it get this name?
2. Retailers started the Christmas shopping season early this year – even offering Black Friday deals before Black Friday.
How does the cartoonist view retailers’ decision to begin Christmas advertising and sales before Thanksgiving?
a) he thinks its funny
b) he doesn’t like it
c) he’s looking forward to getting some good deals on electronics
d) he loves the idea
Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers.
by Jeff Parker, Florida Today
Answers
1. Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. While the origin of the term is debated, it is today associated with special sales and promotions that retailers use to encourage shoppers to use the holiday weekend for shopping. Retailers traditionally operated at a financial loss for most of the year (January through November) and made their profit during the holiday season, beginning on the day after Thanksgiving. When this would be recorded in the financial records, once-common accounting practices would use red ink to show negative amounts and black ink to show positive amounts. Black Friday is the beginning of the period where retailers would no longer have losses (the red) and instead take in the year’s profits (the black). (from wikipedia.org)
2. b) he doesn’t like it
