Does anyone have anything witty to say about Black Friday?
No? Okay, fine, I’ll do it.
Did you know that the term “Black Friday” originated here in my fine city of brotherly love, Philadelphia? The Friday after Thanksgiving was always the start of the Christmas shopping season, but it didn’t always have a name. It was deemed as such by the Philadelphia Police Department in the 1960s, not only because the shopping frenzy packed our streets solid with foot and vehicular traffic (think of the potential for snarled traffic around the flagship Wannamaker’s!), but also because it was the weekend of the Army v. Navy game, which attracted its own horror of gridlock. The combination made the streets impassible.
There, I bet you didn’t know that.