Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year. It marks the official beginning to the Christmas shopping season. The "black" in the name comes from the standard accounting practice of using red ink to denote negative values (in this case, profits) and black ink to denote positive values. Black Friday is the day when retailers traditionally get back "in the black" after operating "in the red" for the previous months.