Day after Thanksgiving in 2024

When is Day after Thanksgiving?

Celebrated on the Friday after the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, The Day after Thanksgiving is not a federal holiday but is a holiday in almost half the states in the U.S. and is given as a day off by most employers.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 39% of private-sector workers get a paid holiday, with 69% of public-sector workers also enjoying the day as a paid holiday. This makes it a more popular holiday than Federal holidays such as Presidents' Day, Columbus Day, and even Veteran's Day.

It is a state holiday in Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, and West Virginia.

In Nevada, the day is known as Family Day. In Indiana, the day after Thanksgiving celebrates Lincoln's birthday while Georgia observes Robert E. Lee's birthday.

The popularity of this holiday is understandable. As Thanksgiving always falls on a Thursday, adding this day as a holiday creates a four-day weekend.

Shops are open and this day has come to mark the start of the Christmas shopping period.

Black Friday

Did you know?

The first event popularly referred to as Black Friday was the US gold market crash of 1869, when many investors lost sizeable fortunes.

The 'Black Friday' was first applied to the day after Thanksgiving back in the 1950s when a factory trade magazine referred to workers calling out sick in order to have four days off over the Thanksgiving weekend. 

The term wasn't used much until a few decades later in Philadelphia, where the streets would become so congested with shoppers that it was termed 'Black Friday'. Newspapers at the time used the term to describe law enforcement's dealings with large crowds. Some have suggested that the term stemmed from the day's profitability. It brought merchants "in the black," since sales in the rest of the year often lagged behind, or were "in the red." and thus, Black Friday was an appropriate term.

The term gained traction when the New York Times used it in 1975 to describe the shopping day. In recent years, the term has made its way around America and is now a common name for the day after Thanksgiving.

Even in Europe, Black Friday is becoming more common as retailers (led by the US internet sellers such as Amazon) use it to raise awareness of the shopping period and offer many sale bargains on that day. Indeed the UK often stages its own tribute to the original Philadelphia Black Friday when shoppers fight over bargains in supermarkets.

Cyber Monday

The Monday after Thanksgiving has become known as Cyber Monday as it was the most popular day for online shopping. The term was adopted while online shopping was still in its infancy. Nowadays Cyber Monday is overshadowed by Black Friday.

All this commercial hijacking of a traditional holiday may leave a sour taste in your mouth, but it is far from a modern phenomenon. Thanksgiving itself was moved by President Roosevelt in 1939 from the last Thursday in November to the next-from-last Thursday in an attempt to stimulate the economy by increasing the shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.