Shopping Hordes Expected Monday

Hold off a few days before returning Christmas gifts, if you don’t like crowds: Monday will be the third-busiest shopping day of the year, says the Los Angeles Times. Because December 26 is a Monday (for the first time in six years), store traffic could rise 60 percent over last year. The LA Times says not to expect fire-sale prices, however, since retailers did a good job this year of clearing holiday merchandise in the weeks after Thanksgiving, but many retailers did offer steep discounts. "It was a stampede at 8 a.m.," a Boston-area told Reuters about her trip to Saks.