Black Friday. To most Americans, these two words symbolize the most vital shopping day of the year. This is the time when every dedicated bargain shopper gets their Christmas list ready and lines up at the retail store of their choice to wait for the doors to open.

This usually means waiting until 4 a.m. for retail stores to open. However, 2011 ushered in changes for most Black Friday shoppers. This year, many stores opened at midnight, and Wal-Mart was even earlier than that, opening at 10 p.m. Thanksgiving night.

But what is Black Friday really? Most people believe it to be the time when they knock out their holiday shopping list a month ahead of time and at a cheaper price.

However, Black Friday is an economic event. When any business is in the “black,” hence Black Friday, the business is making a profit. Until the day after Thanksgiving, most retail businesses are in the “red.” This means that they are losing sales. The majority of retailers make 20 percent of their annual sales volume between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year.

Therefore, retail stores rely on American shoppers and their dedication to Black Friday to keep their sales strong.

During my Black Friday adventures, my mom and I stumbled across such dedicated shoppers. At lunch we spotted a group of ladies sporting their “Black Friday Swat Team” t-shirts and shopping day game faces. The shoppers, Christine Richardson, Teasha Roberts and Stacy Brummett were on a mission and knew just how to do so.

The women began their journey at midnight, starting at Target.

“We did it [Black Friday shopping] in a strategic way. We wanted to miss the bigger crowds, and we knew Wal-Mart opened at 10, so by the time we were done at Target, we knew Wal-Mart would still have a lot of inventory but less of a crowd,” Roberts said.

This is the team’s seventh year of their Black Friday shopping marathon. Shopping from midnight through the next day shows true shopping spirit.

This mentality is the attitude retail stores hope to encourage. As doors begin to open earlier every year, shoppers buckle down and fight for the best Black Friday success.