Day-after-Christmas sales: Stars are aligned for a super Sunday

The presents haven’t been unwrapped yet. No one has pulled out the stocking stuffers hanging by the fireplace. But most people, it seems, are already dreaming of the day-after-Christmas sales, when retailers get serious about reducing prices.

Charles Van Stone in Shepherdstown, W.Va., will be shopping for expensive car waxes. Karen Audet of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., plans to hit Neiman-Marcus for designer Christmas tree ornaments. And, Garden City, N.Y., resident Tracy Murtagh expects to bring her two nieces into New York to shop for discounted clothes at a department store.

Such shopping would ordinarily just “pad the numbers of a successful holiday season,” says Scott Krugman, a spokesman at the National Retail Federation in Washington. But because the day after Christmas falls on a Sunday, Mr. Krugman anticipates even larger crowds than normal.

“There is a confluence of events in terms of returns, gift card redemptions, and clearance that will make it a perfect storm in terms of customer traffic,” he says.

However, even with this influx of shoppers, Mr. Krugman says, it is doubtful the day's sales will be larger than last Saturday's, referred to by retailers as Super Saturday, or Christmas Eve, often referred to as “Father’s Day,” for the men who wait until the last minute to shop.

The National Retail Federation had forecast a 3.3 percent gain in holiday sales this year over last, but some other retail analysts suggest it will be more like a 5 percent gain. That is in large part because shoppers appear to have lost some reticence about spending money.

On Thursday, the Reuters/University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment hit its highest level since June.

“Consumers have become more optimistic in their outlook,” wrote Chris Christopher, an economist who covers consumers for IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass., in an analysis on Thursday.

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