When is Black Friday 2018? Here's everything you need to know

When is it?

Black Friday this year will take place on November 23.

What is it?

Black Friday is the informal name for the day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States – but the shopping bonanza day has now spread around the world.

It has been regarded as the beginning of the USA’s Christmas shopping season since 1952, although the term “Black Friday” did not become widely recognised or used until the early 2000s.

What happens?

Most major retailers open very early and offer promotional sales and bargains – with traditional shops and online retailers all offering huge discounts across many products.

Will it be busy?

Black Friday has routinely been the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States since 2005 and since its arrival on these shores, many UK stores have reported a brisk and busy trade as shoppers scrabble for bargains.

Where does the name come from?

The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday applied to the day after Thanksgiving in a shopping context suggests that the term originated in Philadelphia, where it was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving. This usage dates to at least 1961.

More than 20 years later, as the phrase became more widespread, a popular explanation became that this day represented the point in the year when retailers begin to turn a profit, thus going from being “in the red” to being “in the black.”

Will there be any trouble

There have been reports of violence occurring between shoppers on Black Friday, both in the USA and UK as shoppers scrap for desired items.