Retailers are starting to put up Christmas decorations as they try to extend the holiday shopping season in hopes of bringing in more customers in what could be one of the worst retail shopping seasons in decades.
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Alison Stone, a mother of one who lives in Los Angeles, plans on shopping smarter this year, forgoing electronics and unnecessary gifts.
"For Christmas, we definitely want to use points to purchase things that we've accumulated with a credit card," she said. "So we're thinking ahead about how to be wiser with the holidays."
In this economy, savings trumps tradition. Many shoppers said that the wanted to preserve the holiday spirit for the kids, but would hold back on exchanging presents between adults.
"I think it will be just the children this year," Karen Charbonneau, a grandmother from Los Angeles, told ABC News. "We'll just skip the gifts for the adults. It really isn't necessary."
"We drew names this year in both families to make it easier on everybody, so we only have to buy one gift for each person in both of our families, and we've put a spending limit on that as well," said Jodi Emmerson, mother of one, with another on the way. "We're probably going to get them two, maybe three things this year, instead of 10 things."
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