Well, it seems again that online will have beaten the offline retailers.

While retail was/still is giving it away at drastic discounts. Online etailers like Amazon are getting high fives.

Amazon.com Inc. said Friday that the 2008 holiday season was the online retailer’s “best ever,” with more than 6.3 million items ordered and 5.6 million units shipped during its peak day on Dec. 15.

SpendingPulse PART Of MasterCard Advisors  tracks total sales paid for by credit card, checks and cash has said its preliminary data indicates that retail sales dropped between 5.5 percent and 8 percent this holiday season compared with last year.

However  Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth said Amazon’s competitive position has actually strengthened during the downturn, as some brick-and-mortar retailers were forced to close stores and had difficulty obtaining inventory.

Based on the number of items ordered, Amazon said its holiday bestsellers included the Nintendo Wii, Samsung’s 52-inch LCD HDTV, the Apple iPod touch and the Blokus board game.

There seem such a disconnect between the news and at least what I have experienced in my dips into world of malls and shopping of late.

The last few years I have shopped online not so much because of my support of all that is digital, but perhaps an innate male fear of the giant parking lot, the long walk and giant store(s). Each one an event filled with obstacles called people. And each of these people no doubt have been strategically placed to be in MY way.

As part of the male species I think of gift shopping as the target and the people as obstacles. Every male has been hard wired to treat each of these gifts as their personal mission. So each car and each person who steps into my path triggers old football urges to stay low, drive my feet and get to the quarterback. In this case that skateboard sitting on the furthest section of the store.

On this particular Christmas & during this particular economy, in California where I was told by the sexy voice on the radio that we have the second highest unemployment in the Country at 8.2%. I wonder if these obstacles, I mean people have chosen to play by the sexy voice’s rules. Because, the freakin’ places are packed every single day and night since I started paying attention on black Friday.

A Shop.org survey says that 84.6 million consumers plan to shop online from home or at work today. This is up from 72 million in ‘07 and 60.7 million in ‘06. The survey found that 37.2 percent of adults will shop online today, up over 16 percent over last year.

83.7 percent of retailers will have a special promotion for Cyber Monday, up from 72.2 percent last year.

So one has to wonder is the net not hit by the recession that we have supposedly been in for one year? However, Black Friday did find a slight year over year increase as did overall Thanksgiving sales.