With the turkey trimmed and safely hiding in sealed containers, I know that the holiday season is officially here; and as I watched Santa arrive at the end of the rainy Macy's holiday parade yesterday I knew that it was only a matter of time before I had to get started on my holiday shopping. My nieces Brooke and Jaeylyn and nephews Jack and Matthew would surely have lists for me to work from, but what to buy for those more challenging people on my list?

The thought of going out to the mall today, still stuffed from my overindulgence from last night's meal, is not the first thing on my list; instead, it's online shopping for me.

According to snopes.com,

The day after Thanksgiving is the day millions of Americans, enjoying a rare Friday off (and a dearth of football games on television), head for the malls to kick off the Christmas shopping season. "Black Friday" (as it is known in the retail industry, supposedly because it's the day when retailers turn the corner and see their income statements move out of the red and into the black, or it's the day when retail workers are exposed to the worst crowds and customer behavior) is regularly cited as "the busiest shopping day of the year." But although Black Friday may be the day the greatest number of holiday shoppers traipse through malls, it isn't necessarily the biggest day of the year in terms of dollars spent:

Popular belief has it that the Friday after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year.

These days many shoppers buy with the holidays in mind all year long. Decorations go up around Halloween, and some Santa Clauses arrive at malls before Thanksgiving. Some shoppers get an early start Thursday at a limited number of stores like Kmart and Wal-Mart Super Centers, which are open on the holiday. To be sure, there are still intense crowds on the day after Thanksgiving — led by the "doorbusters" who show up at dawn for early-bird sales.

"It's one of the busiest days in terms of traffic but not in sales," said Pam Rucker, spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation. "But the mystique is still there."¹

"People just want to get out and do something on that day," said Jay McIntosh, director of U.S. Retail and Consumer Products for accounting giant Ernst & Young. "They do because of all of the incentives to shop, but many aren't buying."

The consistent holiday shopping trend is that sales figures spike on the day after Thanksgiving, drop sharply immediately afterwards, then steadily increase throughout December, peaking on the four days comprising the two weekends before Christmas. The result is that Black Friday nearly always ends up ranking below the last Saturday before Christmas (or December 23, if Christmas Day falls on a weekend), and in recent years it has ranked between fourth and eighth on charts of the year's busiest shopping days.

According to statistics published by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), the top shopping days for the years 1993 through 2002 were:

• 2002: Saturday, Dec. 21
• 2001: Saturday, Dec. 22
• 2000: Saturday, Dec. 23
• 1999: Saturday, Dec. 18
• 1998: Saturday, Dec. 19
• 1997: Saturday, Dec. 20
• 1996: Saturday, Dec. 21
• 1995: Saturday, Dec. 23
• 1994: Friday, Dec. 23
• 1993: Thursday, Dec. 23

For those years, "Black Friday" held the following positions in the ICSC's rankings of year's busiest shopping days:

• 2002: #4
• 2001: #6
• 2000: #5
• 1999: #8
• 1998: #8
• 1997: #7
• 1996: #5
• 1995: #7
• 1994: #8
• 1993: #8

Holiday shopping patterns may change in years to come due to the increasing prevalence of shoppers' using on-line sales outlets for their holiday purchases. (Indeed, online retailers have already coined the term "Cyber Monday" to describe the first weekday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a day on which their sales supposedly spike as shoppers pile onto the Internet to buy online whatever they couldn't or didn't get at the mall the previous weekend.) For now, however, Wal-Mart still remains the top holiday-gift destination for U.S. shoppers.

Whether you're at the mall or online, the holiday shopping season is upon us!

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Cheers,