After a holiday feast, some went holiday shopping on Thanksgiving

A Thanksgiving rain shower wasn’t enough to oust Joanne Miller from her red folding chair at the front of the long line of shoppers waiting outside Santa Rosa’s Best Buy store.

A self-proclaimed fan of bargains and tradition, she arrived at the Santa Rosa Avenue retailer at 4:30 a.m. Twelve hours later, she had finished reading “Seven From Heaven,” a story of septuplets, dined on Panda Express takeout and made a lot of new friends. Finally, the store opened at 5 p.m. Thursday and it was time for her to get a jump on the Black Friday rush.

“This year is really fun,” said Miller, 66, of Lake County, who has delighted in Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping for 12 years. “There’s no drama-rama like there was in previous years. Last year, people came and put chairs out and left for the day.”

Miller was one of thousands in Sonoma County searching for deals Thursday at stores opened on Thanksgiving Day for people who wanted to go out and shop for holiday gifts before today’s traditional start of the holiday shopping season. When you count in-store and online sales, Black Friday is expected to be the busiest shopping day this year.

At the J.C. Penney department store in Coddingtown Mall, as many as 3,000 people were waiting for doors to open at 2 p.m., manager Mike Gobble said.

Gabe King, a San Rafael electrician who has spent the past four years shopping on Thanksgiving, was one of them. King, 30, said his family doesn’t celebrate the holiday, so it’s a good time to buy discounted items like the $200 suitcase he got for $50.

“The deals are about all there is to like about it,” he said, waiting in a Penney’s checkout line that snaked through the store. “I’m not a big fan of huge crowds. But I do catch some good deals.”

Tammy Thompson waded into the crowd at Penney’s for her first and possibly last foray into Thanksgiving shopping. She usually spends the holiday with family, but since her son is working with a Cal Fire unit battling the Camp fire in Butte County she postponed Thanksgiving until he returns home. His absence prompted her to shop and she bought baby clothes for her grandnephew for $80 that would have cost $300 without the discounts.

“People are in a nice mood, there’s no pushing … I’m trying to take advantage of deals and pretend it’s not Thanksgiving,” said Thompson, a 60-year-old retiree.

Nationwide, holiday sales are expected to increase as much as 4.8 percent over 2017 to nearly $721 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. That annual sales growth would mark a slowdown from last year’s 5.3 percent, the biggest gain since 2010.

Sonoma County will likely see similar percentage increases, said Ben Stone, executive director of the Sonoma County Economic Development Board. With a low unemployment rate forcing wage increases in some sectors of the local economy, it will shape up to be a “strong Christmas and holiday season,” Stone said.

“The challenge for our department stores will be of course online, which continues to nip away at shopping” at brick-and-mortar stores, he said.

Online holiday sales this season are predicted to jump an estimated 14.8 percent to $124.1 billion, according to an Adobe analysis of 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites.

Still, holiday shoppers like 78-year-old Yvonne Myers prefer to peruse stores.

The Modesto resident who has been an avid Black Friday shopper for about three decades said she loves the “rush” of the crowds and the ability to check out the merchandise before buying.

“I like to touch it and feel it,” she said, browsing at Penney’s.

According to the National Retail Federation’s annual holiday survey, consumers will spend an average of $1,007 on gifts, decorations and other goods during the 2018 holiday season. An estimated 34 million people across the country were expected to shop on Thanksgiving Day, with another 116 million predicted to join in the holiday shopping Black Friday, according to an annual survey by the retail federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.

While some shoppers hit local department and big-box stores on Thursday, others flooded into Oliver’s Market on Stony Point Road for last-minute pies and bottles of wine to go with the Thanksgiving meal. By the time the store closed at 4 p.m., it had sold 79 of the prepared Thanksgiving family meals that carried a price tag of $129.99 each, store director Roger Guttridge said.

Downtown at the Santa Rosa Plaza, which opened at 5 p.m. Thursday, merchants were expecting heavy foot traffic at night, said Christa Williams, marketing and business development director. Coming to the mall is a way to bring families together after their traditional holiday celebration, she said.

“We find that people enjoy having an extension to their Thanksgiving holiday,” Williams said.

For Sears department store at the plaza, this will be the final holiday season before the storied retailer closes by the end of the year. Once the nation’s largest retailer, Sears has been shutting U.S. stores and struggling to stay afloat as Amazon and other online competitors continue to grab a bigger share of retail sales.

Back at the Best Buy on Santa Rosa Avenue, Miller recalled fond memories of sleeping overnight on a recliner while in line waiting to get her share of Black Friday specials. Thursday she had her eye on a 70-inch LG TV, “The Greatest Showman” DVD and games for her Nintendo Switch before heading to the Petaluma Village Premium Outlets to spend more of the $1,500 she brought for her shopping blitz.

“Black Friday is my favorite holiday,” she said with a big smile.