12/8/25
By Favour Ndukwe and Valerie Salazar Pena, Staff Writers
ROCKLAND- Black Friday just passed, but who really celebrated it?
Black Friday fell on the day after Thanksgiving on Friday, November 28. Some deals and sales emerged, but no one seemed to be fully in on it.
Black Friday originated in Philadelphia in the 1960s to describe the widespread mass of tourists visiting the city after Thanksgiving. Businesses started coining the term, offering large sales across their shops to the tourists visiting, in turn making a profit or “going in the black.”
This tradition of offering sales continued within businesses, and the craze for it grew each year of once-in-a-lifetime sales.
But these past few years, many do not seem interested in the event anymore, and some even go against participating in it.
Rockland High School business teacher, Mr. Jared Lordi, remembers celebrating Black Friday as a young adult.
“I think there was a culture built around it where people got really excited about it and you [can] even go back and watch old clips of the 2000s, people would be stomping on top of each other, trying to get into stores, breaking into Walmart, so they can be the first ones to get [the deal],” he says.
Currently, he does not partake in Black Friday and has no plans to.
Mr. Lordi also said, “Christmas is something in theory, you’re celebrating the birth of Jesus, and yet it’s turned into this big gift-buying experience.”
Rockland High School Freshman Health teacher Susan Phelps believes that Black Friday was more popular in the past, and that it no longer holds the same value today as it did in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“The products nowadays don’t seem to have the same quality as they did in the past,” she said.
Mrs. Phelps also mentioned that many people are unable to make time for Black Friday shopping due to work.
She said, “People work after Thanksgiving dinner. You have to go to work because everyone will want to shop.”
Staff note that most people shop online now and find convenience in simply scouring online for deals rather than going in person, fundamentally destroying the entire Black Friday experience.
On the other hand, Rockland High School English teacher Ms. Kristen Walsh explains that she has never celebrated Black Friday and instead stayed inside for the day after Thanksgiving.
“I think it has become less about family and taking a break, especially since Thanksgiving is an American holiday specifically about being grateful for what you have, and then the irony of everyone going out to get more things,” she said.
Ms. Walsh also believes that workers should have the day after Thanksgiving off as a way to combat the craziness that is Black Friday.
She also shares that during her journalist career, she was yelled at by a group of people waiting outside a luxury store when she was allowed entrance to write a story, showing how aggressive buyers have acted during such a holiday.
Due to people working and how stingy the sales are now, the downgrading of products, people who put the holiday in the past tend to leave the doors of Black Friday open, losing the significance it used to have and seeing it as just another casual sale.