The day following Thanksgiving Day in the United States which marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, retailers generally open for extended hours and see high shopping traffic that translates into a boom in sales and profits. To attract increasing numbers of shoppers, retailers offer special promotions. This day was dubbed “Black Friday” because retail stores begin to turn a profit thanks to the high volume of sales, and as such they are said to be “in the black”- an expression borrowed from the standard accounting practice of using black ink to denote profits, especially net income, and red ink to indicate losses.