Taking The Temperature Of The 2015 Holiday Shopping Season

From Black Friday to Cyber Monday and beyond, we’ll add up the dollars and trends and bargains of the 2015 holiday shopping season.

The holidays come, and people want to indulge their loved ones with gifts. Some will be knitted by the wood stove, or carved in the garage, the basement. A whole lot more will be bought. Seventy percent of the US economy is consumer driven. A lot gets driven in these weeks. But how that happens is changing. Black Friday appears to be settling down. Cyber Monday seems hardly necessary. Consumers are already flooding online.  American retailing is being transformed. This hour On Point, after door busters and midnight madness and Black Friday, American retailing now.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Marshall Cohen, retail industry analyst at the NPD Group. (@marshalcohen)

Sarah Halzack, national retail reporter for the Washington Post. (@sarahhalzack)

Washington Post: Let’s be honest: Black Friday needs a new name. — "Black Friday is still hanging on as our catchall name for the kickoff of the holiday shopping season. But it’s no longer a very good one, because the event has metastasized into several days and Friday is losing ground as the most important single day of the shopping bonanza."

Bloomberg Business: Christmas Eve Is the New Black Friday -- "New data from Foursquare show the highest-traffic day at brick-and-mortar retailers is no longer Black Friday. Instead, more people visited stores on the Saturday before Christmas (Super Saturday) last year, when shoppers went out to snag last-minute gifts. "

C|Net: Black Friday is Nov. 27. Here's why it doesn't matter — "Good news, shoppers. You no longer have to brave the shoving hordes the day after Thanksgiving to grab amazing deals. The Christmas buying season is already here. Retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Target and Best Buy launched their big Black Friday marketing campaigns the minute Halloween came to a close. In other words, no need to set your alarm for 5 a.m. to score a place in line for that heavily discounted big-screen TV.