Traditions That Just Need to End (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

Malia and Sasha Obama gave the patented teenage-girl eye roll to the presidential turkey pardon, and I don’t blame them. If you weren’t a reporter getting paid to cover that tired Thanksgiving photo-op — or even if you were — would you really want to be there?

The same goes for the annual calculation of the cost of the 12 Days of Christmas gifts. Who cares? The only one that’s vaguely relevant is the price of five golden rings, but no one who invested in gold five years ago as a panicky hedge against the runaway inflation that was surely bearing down on the dollar wants his holiday ruined by thinking about that.

The holiday season, now starting before Halloween, is a joyous time filled with one news tradition after another. Holiday sales reports are another seasonal favorite, and consumer activity actually is an important economic indicator. Every fall, except in the depths of the Great Recession, retailers make very optimistic predictions for consumer spending, as if telling people they are going to spend a lot more on gifts will make it so. Then every year, the retailers seem disappointed, as if we’ve let them down.

In early October, the National Retail Federation predicted holiday sales to grow by 4.1 percent. Well, the shopping season is still young — especially for people who share my deadline-oriented habits — but Black Friday did not get the message. On Nov. 30, the same NRF announced that Thanksgiving weekend spending was off by 11 percent compared with last year. At that rate, Black Friday will soon become just another day at the Wal-Mart.

Still, the retailers association didn’t revise its optimistic prediction for the overall season because, notwithstanding the easy slow-news-day video of hateful shoppers battling it out in Victoria’s Secret, Americans are still going to spend money at this time of year. We just aren’t following the same set traditions that the lazy news media have been conditioned to expect.

“Early holiday promotions, the continued growth of online shopping, and an improving economy changed the way millions of people approached the biggest shopping weekend of the year,” the NRF explained on Nov. 30. I know this is true at my house.

A dozen years ago, when my sons were medium-sized instead of young adults, I happily participated in some early-Friday-morning shopping expeditions because there really were some spectacular deals to be had on things that we needed, like a new family computer. (Remember when that was a thing?)

There are still “doorbusters” to be had on Black Friday. The problem is, someone somewhere is always selling similar items at similar prices, so Black Friday has ceased to be a singular opportunity for a bargain on a highly desirable item. It has become mainly a cultural phenomenon that seems more important to the news media than it is to actual consumers. And because there is still a finite number of dollars to go around, Black Friday is now starting on Thursday, which seems to be mainly a defensive strategy.

(I’m glad I don’t have to work on Thanksgiving Day anymore, but I did it when I worked at daily newspapers and I didn’t feel abused. The only reason to feel particularly sorry for retail employees who are now among the millions who routinely work on the holiday is the fact that they are on the front line of the hoards whipped into a shopping frenzy.)

The portion of holiday sales, and sales in general, made online has continued to grow, of course, but eventually even online commerce will reach maturity. The experts think online shopping will eventually top out at 15-20 percent of consumer spending. (I’ve spent four times as much with Amazon.com this year as I did last year, but that’s still a fraction of what I spent at my neighborhood Kroger.)

Smart retailers, the kind that survive, will adjust to consumer habits. They will recognize which things people buy online and which things they still want to buy in a store. But, as the NRF pointed out again last week, brick-and-mortar “Main Street” retailers deserve a level playing field. It is long past time for Congress to require online retailers to collect and remit state and local sales taxes. (And please don’t tell me this is too complicated. A national database of sales taxes by ZIP code would not be complicated, and local jurisdictions would have every possible incentive to keep it updated.)

Calls for sales tax fairness have become a holiday tradition that needs to become obsolete, along with the stupid turkey pardon.

Gwen Moritz is editor of Arkansas Business. Email her at GMoritz@ABPG.com.