The name was an insult before it was a brand: police in Philadelphia and Rochester used Black Friday in the 1950s for the crowds and traffic the day after Thanksgiving, and a 1961 attempt to rebrand the day Big Friday failed. The flattering version (that shops run at a loss from January to November and only go into the black over the holidays) came much later, the earliest known published reference being in The Philadelphia Inquirer of 28 November 1981. What people now argue about is what retailers did with the day once it became the busiest of the year. Opening times marched backwards from 6 a.m. in the late 2000s to 4 or 5 a.m. in the 2010s, then midnight, then Thanksgiving evening itself, until the 2014 Black Thursday sales were generally a failure and most retailers abandoned the practice by 2020. The current objection is narrower and more specific than fatigue: among Americans whose interest has dropped, 63% say the discounts are misleading and 42% say the goods are poor quality, both ahead of the 34% who blame their own finances, and 37% simply say the novelty has worn off.