According to Wikipedia, the term Black Friday originated in Philadelphia. It described “the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.” The definition that most of us have heard — that sales from this one day would be high enough to push a business’s ledger into the black (making them profitable) — came about a bit later, around 1975.
Now, flash forward to today. We now live in an era where most of your shopping can be done from the comfort of your own home. You don’t even need wear pants to fully satisfy the stockings of everyone you know.
In 2005, the term Cyber Monday was invented, describing the huge wave of shopping that happens the Monday following Thanksgiving from consumers while at work. The belief is that with the five-day lead in (due to Black Friday excitement) helps online retailers clean up with their second-highest-selling day of the year.
For what it’s worth, Thanksgiving itself has become a large selling day for online retailers. This is due to people at home doing some research Thanksgiving night. They see that great deals are already happening, they see the free shipping offeres and they pull the trigger. Hooray, capitalism!
But this year, a new trend seems to be popping up, one that I’m officially coining the term Brown Wednesday. Brown Wednesday is the day before Thanksgiving, and it’s the day that my spam box become abnormally full of emails from retailers about all of their great upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. (Brown for the color that Apple Mail uses to mark messages as spam. And since most spam is complete crap.)
It’s unfortunate. Most of the emails that come in are from companies I normally want to see emails from, so on Brown Wednesday their deals don’t get marked as spam, it's something I have to do by hand. As a quick example, in the last hour I’ve received sale spam from Amazon, AT&T, Macy’s (not sure why on that one) and SpreadShirt. I don’t want to stop getting things from these companies, I just don’t need notification of sales around this week.
Brown Wednesday only comes around once a year, and if you’re like me (someone with an email address), you’re celebrating right along with me. Actually, let’s say enduring. You’re enduring right along with me.
I don’t know about you, but at the moment I’m about knee deep in brown.
