Shopping on Black Friday is a ritual that many cannot resist

The weather was frigid Friday morning, but when it comes to enjoying the Black Friday shopping ritual, Keanna Avery and her mother Tanya Anderson, both of Oswego, say nothing stands in their way.

“This is mother-daughter time and we don’t care,” Avery said as she and her mother visited the Chicago Premium Outlets mall in Aurora well before 8 a.m. “Honestly, I don’t have anything specific that I’m looking for . I’m just looking for all the good deals out here. This is a ritual. We just have to do it.”

Malls and other retailers in the Aurora area were busy Friday morning, with some stores opening early in the morning to accommodate all Black Friday shoppers.

According to the National Retail Federation, “183.4 million people will shop this holiday weekend, with Americans expected to spend up to $989 billion…about $902 per person.”

The expected number of people shopping over the weekend would surpass the previous record of 182 million set last year.

The association also said the top two reasons consumers shop on Black Friday are “because the deals are too good to pass up” and, like Avery and her mother, “because it’s tradition.”

Anderson and her daughter arrived at the outlet mall around 7:30 a.m. Friday, but said they had been outside since 4 a.m

“We’ve already made six or seven stops,” she said with a laugh. “We have our coupons, we have some specials and we have a few things here. Sometimes we shop for each other, even if that spoils the surprise. We usually take a lunch break, but we’ll be out here all day until 9 or 10 tonight.”

Jose Gonzalez of Naperville also braved the elements Friday morning at the Chicago Premium Outlets.

“My wife is still in there shopping, and I just brought loads to the car,” he said, holding a box in his arms. “This thing I have is the only thing I got for myself. We’re here early to avoid the rush and hopefully get some discounts you don’t normally get.”

Retailers including Carolina Cruz, manager of the Steve Madden store at the outlet center, said Black Friday crowds at the mall were good.

“We opened at 6am and assumed it would be busy and shoppers would be trying to spend all their money. Right now we’ve seen a lot of traffic with people, a lot of shoppers,” she said Friday morning. “It was 5:30 a.m. here and cars were already parked and people were lining up at big stores like Nike, North Face and Uggs. This will definitely be one of our biggest days of the year. We always think of Black Friday as a big event.”

Cousins ​​Maia McCullough of Tampa, Florida, and Emma Kraus of Geneva said they were starting a new holiday tradition of their own on Friday.

“This is the first year we’ve done this,” McCullough said of getting up early for a Black Friday shopping trip. “It’s not as crazy as we thought, but we were warned. We’ve probably been to seven stores already, but we’re almost there.”

“The goal today is to buy myself something,” Kraus said. “I didn’t do any research or look at the ads. I just shop blindly.”

Meanwhile, in Batavia, the Target store at 115 N. Randall Road was just as busy.

Friends Kari Rogerson of Sugar Grove and Kate Male of Big Rock said they “left their husbands at home and we are starting a new tradition together.”

“This is our first yearbook,” Rogerson said. “We found each other and developed a maternal bond. We did this with our mothers, but we left the children with our husbands, and this is a new tradition.”

“The goal today is to shop and do everything in one day because we are busy women,” Male said. “I like the offers. We haven’t done any research, but it doesn’t matter because we’ll visit all the stores and hopefully get lucky.”

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.