The origin of the name, "Black Friday" has been traced back to the 1970s and did not gain widespread popularity until 2002. The term historically comes from the retailer's shift to profitability during the holiday season. Years ago when accounting records were kept by hand, red ink indicated financial loss while black ink indicated profit, thus coining the popular fiscal terms of being "in the red," (losing money) or "in the black" (profitable).

Considered by many as the "official" beginning to the holiday season, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when many U.S. consumers typically begin their Christmas shopping. Stores are often decorated for the Christmas season in what seems like immediately following Halloween. Retailers usually open very early, some at 5 A.M. (as of last year I saw one at 4 a.m.) to offer their door buster deals. Sales are heavily promoted by retailers throughout the country.The next rung up the remote control ladder is the so called "smart remote". This type of remote is able to control multiple pieces of equipment from different manufacturers. Some can control up to 8 or 10 different components. They are usually set to control each piece of equipment by entering a 3 or 4 digit code. Some of these units will learn control functions from other remote controls. This is helpful if the unit you need to control is not in your remote control's internal database. You usually accomplish the learning by entering a "learn" mode on the smart remote, pointing the "teaching" remote at the smart remote and pressing the desired button. Viola! Your smart remote has learned the command from the original remote control.

Black Friday has been referred to as the busiest retail shopping day of the year by the media, and typically is but not in terms of both sales and customer traffic. That day would be reserved for either Christmas Eve or the last Saturday before Christmas.

Some of the more popular retailers (both brick and mortar and online) that offer big deals on Black Friday are, in no particular order:

Best Buy, Radio Shack, Staples, Office Depot, CompUSA, Wal-Mart, Lowes, K-Mart, Sears, Office Max, Target, Toys R Us, Sams Club, JC Penney, Home Depot, of course plenty of jewelry stores, electronics stores and many others. We sincerely apologize if we may have missed your store as there are so many we couldn't possibly know them all.

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