109 free Black Friday trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Black Friday trivia quiz is about the day after American Thanksgiving, the sale that traditionally opens the Christmas shopping season (for general retail, malls and brands, try our Shopping quiz instead). It covers where the name really came from (Philadelphia police, not accountants' ink), why Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving in 1939, how doorbusters got their name, and how the day spread to Britain, Canada, Mexico's El Buen Fin and Egypt's White Friday. The easy questions are ones most shoppers can answer: which day it falls on, what Cyber Monday is, who runs Small Business Saturday and what Buy Nothing Day protests. From there it works through the whole long weekend and its cousins: Giving Tuesday, Green Monday, Super Saturday, Free Shipping Day, Prime Day, Singles' Day and Boxing Day, plus the record years, the 2008 Walmart tragedy that gave doorbusters a darker meaning, the pepper-spray incident over Xbox 360s, the .blackfriday domain and the states whose blue laws keep big stores shut on Thanksgiving. There are numbers questions too on shopper counts and online sales records. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the related shopping days before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this, our Thanksgiving and Christmas quizzes cover the rest of the season.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does Black Friday traditionally mark the start of?
The Christmas shopping season
It is the busiest shopping day of the US year.
Q 02On what day of the week does US Thanksgiving fall, fixing Black Friday's date?
The fourth Thursday of November
The date became uniform nationwide in 1941.
Q 03Which American city's police first used 'Black Friday' for post-Thanksgiving crowds and traffic?
Philadelphia
Rochester police used it too.
Q 04What did the city's merchants try to rename the day in 1961?
Big Friday
The rebrand was quickly forgotten.
Q 05In what year did 'Black Friday' first appear in The New York Times, still meaning that city's crowds?
1975
Retailers in Cincinnati and LA had still not heard it in 1985.
Q 06The earliest known use of 'Black Friday' for the day after Thanksgiving, in 1951, referred to what?
Workers calling in sick for a long weekend
It appeared in Factory Management and Maintenance.
Q 07Which accounting colour theory did merchants promote in the 1980s to explain the name?
Profits turn ledgers from red to black
The earliest published version is in a 1981 Philadelphia Inquirer.
Q 08Which financial disaster was the most significant early American 'Black Friday'?
The 1869 gold panic
Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner gold.
Q 09Which president's brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, was ruined in the gold-cornering scheme?
Ulysses S. Grant
Grant released government gold and prices dropped 18%.
Q 10On what date did the gold panic that ruined Abel Corbin occur?
September 24, 1869
Grant released $4 million in government gold that day.
Q 11Which president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939 to lengthen the shopping season?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Critics dubbed it 'Franksgiving'.
Q 12Who coined the derisive term 'Franksgiving'?
The mayor of Atlantic City
Charles D. White, in 1939.
Q 13Which retail boss urged Roosevelt to move Thanksgiving in 1939?
Fred Lazarus Jr. of Federated Stores
Federated later became Macy's, Inc.
Q 21Where was Walmart employee Jdimytai Damour trampled to death by shoppers in 2008?
Valley Stream, New York
About 2,000 shoppers waited for the 5 a.m. opening.
Q 22What did a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart use on fellow shoppers in 2011?
Pepper spray
They were waiting for discounted Xbox 360s.
Q 23Which product was the crowd waiting for in the 2011 Los Angeles Walmart incident?
Xbox 360
About 20 people were injured.
Q 24What sparked the 2012 shooting outside a Tallahassee Walmart?
Q 14Which three states gave holidays in both weeks during the 1939 Thanksgiving confusion?
Colorado, Mississippi and Texas
Twenty-three states followed Roosevelt; twenty-two kept the old date.
Q 15How did a 1939 Gallup poll find Americans overall felt about the Thanksgiving date change?
Opposed 62% to 38%
Republicans opposed it 79% to 21%.
Q 16What did a 1941 Commerce Department survey find about the earlier Thanksgiving?
No significant expansion of retail sales
Congress then fixed the fourth Thursday anyway.
Q 17What is a 'doorbuster'?
A limited-supply discount offered at opening
The name refers to doors literally broken by crowds.
Q 18Which retailer's founder coined the term 'doorbuster'?
J.C. Penney
The first ad ran in the Tuscaloosa News in 1949.
Q 19Which 1983 toy caused the earliest recorded doorbuster mania?
Cabbage Patch Kids
Coleco shipped only about 50 dolls per store.
Q 20What is a 'loss leader'?
A product sold below its profit margin to lure shoppers
The vendor hopes to profit on the other goods bought.
A dispute over a parking space
Two people were shot.
Q 25What were shoppers fighting over at a Florence, Kentucky mall in 2015?
Air Jordan sneakers
Smartphone video made it 'the worst brawls in history'.
Q 26What did two women fight over at a Norwalk, California Walmart in 2014?
A Barbie doll
On Thanksgiving night.
Q 27What was the sale first called in Egypt when it began in 2014?
White Friday
The change was for religious and cultural reasons.
Q 28What is the sale called in Pakistan?
Blessed Friday
The name changed for religious reasons.
Q 29Which e-commerce platform created 'Yellow Friday' in Saudi Arabia and the UAE?
noon.com
It is now an annual event.
Q 30What is the Turkish version of the sale called?
Efsane Cuma (Legendary Friday)
It falls on the last Friday of November.