Holiday Shopping Starts Strong for Retailers
PHILLIPS: Strong. That's how the National Retail Federation describes the opening weekend of the holiday shopping season. The trade group says 133 million of U.S. -- or Americans, rather, indulged in holiday shopping. That's what I should say. Over the weekend shoppers spent an average of $265, 15 cents each -- wait a minute. Average of $265.15 each. Can you see that?</s>HARRIS: Yes, I'm with you there.</s>PHILLIPS: I was just talking about my contact lenses. I think it might be the writing. In all, shoppers dropped nearly $23 billion. Did any of that make sense? Twenty-three billion dollars, that's a lot of money. That makes sense. But that's just a fraction of the spending total expected this year. With more on holiday shopping, we're going to go to CNN financial news correspondent Allan Chernoff in New York, because can he make sense of it all. Allan, help me out.</s>ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, any way you add it up, it is big bucks. And it looks like the first weekend of the holiday shopping season certainly was a success for many retailers. Lots of surveys are indicating that sales were up more than 10 percent compared to the year-ago period. However, it appears that many of those door buster specials, like the one you're looking at right now -- we shot this footage early Friday morning at Macy's in midtown Manhattan. Shirts, 65 percent off. Sales like that were pulling shoppers into the stores. Now very good for sales, but not necessarily for profit margins. Also, Wal-Mart has said that it is scaling back its forecast for the entire month of November to a really small gain. So this is one reason we're seeing retailing stocks trading lower today on Wall Street. At the same time, electronic stores seem to have had a very good first weekend. And it appears that many children are demanding electronics.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's what everyone wants. At the minute I'm finding that's what everyone wants, including the children. They're wanting those new games, the new DVDs, everything.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm concerned about the kids. So they don't like clothes. They -- they give me the orders.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I'm going to be spending a little bit less. We're going to be going on a vacation in the springtime. My kids are getting older and before they go away to college. So I'm going to -- they're old enough that I can sit them down and say, "OK, look. We're, you know -- you have to put the money down now if you're going to go away in the spring."</s>CHERNOFF: So at least some people are sacrificing a little bit for the future. Let's look now at some of the best selling toys. According to Toys 'R' Us, not just electronics, but also Dora the Explorer Magic Hair, Hokey Pokey Elmo, and then the game, Operation. Kyra, you remember that? Now you can operate on Shrek, take apart his ears, his nose, everything else. It's -- it's a ball of fun.</s>PHILLIPS: I still have that Operation game. What happened to Grover? You told me Grover was the hottest selling Sesame Street character this year.</s>CHERNOFF: Grover is certainly very hot, as well. That was an exclusive over at Macy's.</s>PHILLIPS: An exclusive.</s>CHERNOFF: You had Grover all over the store. But he was being snapped up at Macy's, midtown Manhattan. But Elmo is the man at Toys 'R' Us.</s>PHILLIPS: OK. Now I got it straight. Thanks for sorting that out for me, Allan. Thank you -- Tony.</s>HARRIS: Staying on the holiday shopping theme, just how much do three French hens, a couple of turtle doves, or five gold rings actually cost? Well, Rhonda Schaffler joins us from the New York Stock Exchange with the answers. Hi, Rhonda.</s>RHONDA SCHAFFLER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Costs a lot of money when you add this all up. We do this as a tradition every year on CNN. "The 12 Days of Christmas." You know the song. What's the price tag behind it all? The entire package mentioned in the holiday classic, not counting all the repetitions, is going to set you back a little bit more than $17,000 this year, driven mostly by the price of skilled labor. PNC Advisers has calculated the Christmas cost index every year since 1984. And while the goods like turtledoves and swans accounted for most of the total costs back in '84, the price for services is actually fueling higher costs these days. In fact, those dancing ladies and leaping lords were the most expensive items on the list. In case you're wondering, the higher price of fuel was also factored into the cost of delivering a pear tree -- Tony.