Black Friday Comes Early

It’s never too early to start pushing the holiday spirit — especially for retailers. We’re still a month and a half out from Christmas and a few weeks away from Black Friday, but as I strolled through the outdoor mall this weekend, it seems retailers had no qualms about dusting displays with fake snow, pumping out John Denver’s Christmas album or breaking out the pumpkin spice lattes for these unforgiving California winters.

I also noticed they’re already starting to leak Black Friday deals. The loudest shouts on the Internet are coming from Wal-Mart, which is apparently offering the Xbox 360 game console for just $99. And you know Target, Sears and Amazon aren’t going to take that kind of price-slashing sitting down. Take a look at this entire list of deals from CNET.

It might seem a little early to be pushing these deals; after all, we did just put our Halloween wigs away. But this year more than ever, retailers are relying on holiday sales and the more anticipation they can build among consumers, the better.

So to those who are waking up before dawn to do their patriotic duty of putting companies back in the black, we salute you. Black Friday has a whole other meaning for me: I’ll be under the covers in a food coma black out.

Photo courtesy teamaskins via flickr.