Joy of Christmas

U.S. shoppers rose before dawn, lined up in below-freezing cold and got into scuffles Friday as crowds across the nation chased discounts on a frenzied first day of the Christmas shopping season.

The morning after the Thanksgiving holiday, millions flocked to the country’s 48,000 shopping malls and other stores. The day kicks off a period accounting for almost a quarter of U.S. retailers’ annual sales. [Through the Shopping Glass : A Century of New York Christmas Windows]

Computers, electronic games, toys and clothes were hot items on what has become known as Black Friday – the biggest sales day in 2003 and the second-biggest last year, according to industry data.

Consumer rage flared as several men tackled one shopper to the ground at a Wal-Mart in Orlando, Florida, in an apparent fight over a bargain item.

Store employees threw free laptops into a crowd of shoppers and shoppers ripped boxes of merchandise from each other’s hands, witnesses said on Cable News Network (CNN).

Meanwhile, shoppers in Washington state reportedly called the police to complain about people who cut in line in front of them.

Some stores gave away gift cards for 10 dollars or 15 dollars to early birds. Retailer Target Corp. offered wake-up calls from Kermit the Frog to entice shoppers to its stores, the Bloomberg financial news agency reported.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, said it had 2 million customers in the first two hours of shopping today after opening its stores at 5 a.m.. Crowds lined up for DVDs priced as low as 3.44 dollars and a Hewlett-Packard desktop computer selling for 398 dollars, Bloomberg said. [The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company]

Retailers will be closely watching this year’s take after high petrol prices and rising inflation raised questions about U.S. consumers’ ability to keep spending at their usual torrid pace.

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