The media will try to talk down Christmas sales this year as they did in recent years because the badly want and need a failing economy. This is expected but unless you live 200 miles from a major shopping area I cannot see how your area could be so different then all the others who reported such large crowds, crowds that were spending money and not just looking.
Expect sales to slow after the monster day on Black Friday, as they do every year and then catch fire again the last 4-5 days before Christmas. This years longer shopping season will play well for the retailers. Don’t worry though, they will surely find some bad news to report about the season. If they cannot find any they will simply manufacture it and report it under the guise of an opinion, but of course not in an Op-Ed column but as news.
I’m in Orlando. Our news reports produced the obligatory “Crowds Throng Malls on Black Friday” articles, but I was there, and they weren’t thronging where I was.
I suspect that articles were written a couple of months ago.
I will be very interested to see if the numbers measure up to the hype. Possibly, the shoppers simply did not feel compelled to shop early this year.