The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday kicks off the start of the Christmas shopping season.

According to Sarah Pruitt, writer specializing in historical narratives and contributor to The History Channel, this term arose in 1869 during the crash of the U.S. gold market on Sep. 24. Two Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked as a team to buy as much of the nation’s gold, in hopes of driving the price sky-high and to sell it for great profits. The conspiracy soon unraveled and sent the stock market into a free-fall; this bankrupted everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.

During the 1950s, Philadelphia police used the term to describe the chaos that erupted on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded the streets of the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on the upcoming Saturday. Philly cops were not able to take the day off and had to deal with extra-long shifts as well as the additional crowds and traffic.

The context changed again in 1961 to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic after Thanksgiving. In order to remove the negative connotations, there was an attempt to alter the terminology to Big Friday but was not successful nationwide.

From the 1980s onward, Black Friday became more widespread as a term to represent the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit from “being in the red” to “being in the black.”

Every year, Black Friday sales have begun earlier in the season. Going from a single retail holiday to being dragged out all month long; Walmart started its sales Nov. 10, Target on Nov. 19 and Sears on  Nov. 20.. The majority of remaining retail stores commence their Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving Day.

Stay safe this holiday season as you ride the Black Friday waves into the most wonderful time of the year.