As we were driving home we discussed the concept of this day being called Black Friday, coming from the simple fact that stores hopefully register profits for the day— their income column will have a larger number than the expense column. In the days when these accounting ledgers were filled in by hand, red ink was used to write in the final number if someone was in debt or experienced a loss and black ink was used for this number if there was a profit.
From a yin-yang perspective this makes some sense. Yin energy is receptive, pulls in—the flow is toward the center. Yang energy is expansive, expressive— the flow is outgoing. When a situation is "in the black," money is coming in, flowing toward the company. When someone is "in the red," money is going out, the company is losing profits. The red color, in fact, could be considered an alert in case anyone reading the accounting books didn’t notice the small minus sign in front of the number— the red color would draw their attention.
Due to this accounting tradition, people get confused about the term Black Friday. It sounds ominous—like something a person would want to avoid. In fact, the recent economic turmoil the country is experiencing has been compared to a day back in 1929 called Black Tuesday or a similar day in 1987 called Black Monday. These were NOT profitable days; there were no gains to be had. So, of course, we’re confused. In one economic situation black is good, in another black is bad. Perhaps this discrepancy between black being good or bad is a higher symbol of the discrepancies (i.e. confusion) that are inherent in our economic system in the first place.
Despite all that, we shopped at the mall on Friday oblivious of good black or bad black, yin or yang, knowing there will always be inconsistencies. Some of those "sales" weren't such great
bargains either.
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