When Black Friday comes.

“Black Friday” from Steely Dan’s “Two Against Nature” concert. The only good Black Friday out there.

Today is “Black Friday,” which in the States is the day after Thanksgiving, widely reported as the biggest shopping day of the year. It’s not really. That’d be the Monday after Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is when half of America, groggy from having overeaten the day before, spends the day lounging and eating leftovers—no longer obligated to cook all that food.

The other half is either in the merchandising business and is obligated to work; or consumers who decide they actually want to brave the crowds and contribute to the madness.

Hence the name “Black Friday.”

Any dictionary will tell you that calling something a “black Friday” means that the particular Friday has been darkened by disaster; there was a tragedy, or an accident, or a downturn, or a bout of bad luck. Well, people have been calling the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” precisely because of that: It sucks to be a clerk, and it sucks to be a shopper, on that day. The clerks have to work ridiculous hours, and a whole lot of shoppers let their a--hole flags fly. Philadelphia police began calling it “Black Friday” in the 1960s, because the downtown sidewalks were overcrowded, the traffic was nuts, and citizen misbehavior kept them busy all the live-long day.

But some years ago, someone started pushing the explanation, “It’s because after all the Christmas sales, the stores are back in the black.” Dan Cordtz of ABC World News Tonight first pitched that explanation in 1982, and gradually it’s caught on as if it’s true. But it’s a bit of clever B.S.; someone trying to spin a negative name into a positive. Philadelphia merchants in the ’60s did not like the name when it was first used. And you may recall that the stores avoided using it—until the mid-’00s, when their new definition caught on, and newspapers began reporting it as if it were true.

Business reporters, like entertainment reporters and sports reporters, whose livelihood too often depends on sucking up to their sources, are sheep. They swallowed the phony definition whole, and repeat it every year.

Well, for clerks and shoppers, it is a dark day. Clerks are forced to cut their Thanksgiving holiday short. Where ordinarily they would be flat on their behinds on the Barcalounger, stuffed to the esophagus with turkey and pie and Pinot, they’ve been forced to stave off that tryptophan coma in order to come to work at 11 p.m. so they can deal with bargain-crazed shoppers at midnight. Or earlier. Some merchants can’t wait for Friday; they’ve gotta open their doors at 11, or 10, or even 8. Inevitably their staff will have to work overnight.

Certain Target ads this year have featured a stereotypical crazed shopper; wild-eyed with madness, she practices running the aisles, speed-wrapping, and maniacally plotting to reach the sale items before they run out of inventory. Guess she hasn’t heard of internet orders. Sadly, I have known people like this; they’re the sort of type-A person who force their teenage kids to dress as reindeer for Christmas photos. (You can tell by the fake smiles in the photo; behind them their eyes reveal that only their young ages are keeping them away from full-blown alcoholism.) These folks suffer too on Black Friday, because they’re dragged to the damned stores to watch Mom lose it over sale items—and lose it again when, after the store runs out of sale items, they refuse to leave the store empty-handed, and scour it for whatever so-called “bargains” they might find, even if they have to snatch them out of other people’s shopping carts.

I’ve been to one such sale in my life, when I was a child. I don’t think it was on Black Friday. But it was terrifying enough. I have, since, seen shoppers go out of their minds over sale items; and yearly I have seen what happens after a crowd trashes a store because of a big sale. I don’t blame those clerks for hating Black Friday. I also don’t think the madness justifies being open at midnight. Other stores don’t bother, and they do just fine.

Today has been “black” for me only in that I am recovering from the flu. I wasn’t allowed to cook anything yesterday—Mom didn’t ban me from the kitchen completely, but the rest of the family contributed enough entrees that the only things she really had to worry about were the turkey, stuffing, and this olive/onion/bleu cheese concoction she makes every year that’s usually consumed by Friday. So I made coffee, got out my Santa hat, dialed up the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack on my iPod, and put up the Christmas tree. But even if I were well enough to go to the store, I wouldn’t set foot in any of them. Coffeehouses might be the only exception, though I expect they’re crowded too.