Black Friday: a huge shopping tradition for many, and the night that most people start their holiday shopping.

When Thanksgiving comes around, many people enjoy their time with the family, eat their meals, and, for some, watch football. However, Black Friday deals are starting earlier and earlier on Thursday night, really making it into Black Thursday seemingly, have cut a lot  of potential family time out of Thanksgiving, and turned it into a madhouse for Christmas shopping, or just shopping in general for some. Deals started as early as 5 p.m. at some stores, including Wal-Mart.

“This year’s black friday deals are actually pretty good. A lot of stores have a lot of really good cheap things, like Kohls their ads seem pretty solid. I did go out this year for black friday, but not until later when the original rush of people settle down,” freshman Aiden Alderson said.

Some of the hottest deals on this year’s black friday came from Wal-Mart,

potentially why their start times for deals were so early. Shoppers could save up to as much as $129 on iPhone 6’s, get 54 inch TV’s for 300 dollars, and up to $100 savings on PS4’s and XBOX 1’s. This seemed to be the case with many supermarket type stores, as Target had similar ads. Clothes stores such as Kohls also had lots of sale’s.“This year’s Black Friday deals were pretty good, Target had some nice sales on technology and things like it, but that’s pretty standard for Black Friday,” freshman Jacob Brewer said.

So, how does Black Friday help the big named companies? Studies say that more than 30 percent of annual sales come between Black Friday and Christmas, and in 2016, nearly 101.1 million people shopped the deals. However in 2017, that number is expected to drop by 4 percent, but online shopping is expected to raise by nearly 18 percent. This years estimation shows that the average shopper will spend around $970 on Black Friday, all that adding up to a total of $682 billion being spent on Black Friday across the globe. This is also good for jobs, as all of the craziness calls for desperate times, and more employees.