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Last week, I was flying through Toronto and while checking in, the ticketing agent exclaimed, “You live in New York City?!”

I was surprised that she was surprised, given that Toronto is only an hour flight and that she must handle routes to New York every day. I quickly realized that her excitement wasn’t that I lived in New York but that she would be heading there soon.

“I’m going there next week! Technically for Thanksgiving but really for Black Friday!”

It took my brain a few beats to process the fact that not only was she looking forward to battling the sharp-elbowed Manhattan crowds…but that she was actually more excited about that than the prospect of sharing a Thanksgiving meal with family and friends. I wondered if she chose to attend a lesser Thanksgiving dinner in order to enable her discount shopping binge.

Black Friday was originally a very negative term

The term Black Friday (when not referring to a stock market crash) was originally used by police officers in Philadelphia in the 1960’s to complain about the traffic jams caused by the combination of shoppers on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving and thousands of fans attending the annual Army-Navy football game, which back then was played in Philadelphia on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

From NPR:

Black Friday “was not a happy term,” department store historian Michael J. Lisicky told CBS News last year. “The stores were just too crowded, the streets were crowded, the buses and the police were just on overcall and extra duty.”

Even a sales manager at the department store Gimbels in Philadelphia back in 1975 acknowledged the term’s negative connotation and link to traffic headaches. “That’s why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today ‘Black Friday,’ ” she told The Associated Press, while watching a policeman struggle with a crowd of jaywalkers. “They think in terms of the headaches it gives them.”

“Prior to the mid-1980s, the term ‘Black Friday’ was always used for some calamitous event,” columnist Paul Mulshine wrote in New Jersey’s Star-Ledger. “All of that negativity makes sense. ‘Black Friday’ has a naturally gloomy sound to it.”

It took decades for retailers and the media to spin the originally negative term to mean “blank ink”, the accounting signal for profit.

Back Friday is an alternative to Black Friday

So instead of celebrating huge crowds, mass consumerism and ten-dollar toasters, what if we celebrated entrepreneurship and creativity?

My friend Chris Nordyke came up with a great concept called Back Friday.

The concept of Back Friday is simple. Instead of engaging in a faceless transaction with a massive company, you back an entrepreneur’s crowdfunding project.

Instead of buying a bigger TV or a new tablet, what if we perused Kickstarter and Indiegogo to find a worthy craftsman or startup business to support?

Instead of lining the pockets of big box retailers, what if we all found and supported an entrepreneur trying to bring her art to the world?

But if this idea caught on, what kind of art, literature and projects could we help bring to life?

An opportunity to teach kids entrepreneurship

Even better…what if we did the browsing, selection and backing alongside our kids, nieces or nephews?

What if we used this opportunity to teach them about creativity and entrepreneurship and art?

Who will you back?

If you back a crowdfunding project today, feel free to use the hashtag #BackFriday, like I did in the tweet below.

Note: The #BackFriday hashtag will also include pictures of weightlifters working on their deltoids and others who have problems spelling. 🙂

What do you think of #BackFriday?

Who will you back?

  • http://pucknkhaosblog.com Gigi Rodgers

    I REALLY WISH I would have read this before that day passed. I would’ve backed this 100%. Even though I don’t participate in Black Friday and stay behind closed doors (I really do think the movie, The Purge, was based off of Black Friday), this would have been a great thing to promote. I will definitely keep this in mind for other holidays as well it will be relevant (I’m looking at you Valentine’s Day. Blech!)
    Cheers!