Today is Black Friday, and is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year.  Many people consider it to be the official beginning to the holiday season and many retailers opened very early this morning and provided big discounts on a wide variety of items.  Although Black Friday is typically considered the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of customer traffic, the busiest day with the highest sales volume is usually either Christmas Eve or the last Saturday before Christmas.  The origin of Black Friday dates back to the mid 1970s and is when many retailers begin to turn a profit or using the old accounting term, “in the black.”