Late season shoppers wrap up holiday shopping at Mall of America with Christmas, Hanukkah days away

After more than an hour, Grace Alexander made it out of the packed Apple store at the Mall of America with a new iPhone, a combined Christmas and birthday gift for her mom.

"And it'll be the gift for next year's Mother's Day and every other holiday in between because it's a really generous gift," Alexander's mom, Cynthia Jacobs, said with a laugh after she helped pick out her new phone.

Jacobs said the lines of customers wrapped around the store were what she expected to see at the Mall of America on the Sunday before Christmas. But Alexander, who said she visits the Mall of America about every other weekend, said the crowds earlier in the afternoon resembled a typical weekend.

As the clock ticks down to Christmas and Hanukkah on Wednesday and guaranteed Christmas Eve delivery has passed, last-minute shoppers must run to brick-and-mortar stores if they have any hope to snag a gift in the eleventh hour. Saturday and Sunday were expected to be almost as busy for stores as Black Friday, analysts said.

Retailers were nervous going into the holiday season. Most forecasts, including the one from the National Retail Federation, predicted modest spending growth of 3%. Plus, the stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas is five days shorter than last year and one of the shortest seasons in several years, pushing retailers to have to jam more transactions in a smaller period of time.

Big-box stores like Minneapolis-based Target started discounts early and saw encouraging results on Thanksgiving weekend, especially Black Friday. Malls also saw strong traffic on Black Friday. Stores were hoping for those same sort of numbers this weekend.

More frenzied shoppers poured into the Mall of America by late afternoon, as many rushed to finish their holiday lists. Many people took a relaxed approach to shopping to enjoy the experience and grabbed photos with Santa or stopped to listen to the Twin Cities' Brio Brass band play a jazzy rendition of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear."

Mall of America shopper Marissa Currie, who traveled to the Twin Cities from a small community in the Canadian province of Manitoba, said she didn't have to wait in too many long lines Sunday afternoon, save for at a couple of stores.

"I thought it would be a lot worse," Currie said, as she sat on the floor surrounded by her children, including 14-year-old Drake Pascoe, who unwrapped new basketball sneakers, off-white Nikes with the familiar black swoosh.

Although some stores saw less foot traffic, customers waited in lines out the door at shops including Build-A-Bear Workshop and the LEGO Store. A long check-out queue at Barnes & Noble snaked around the front of the store.

Black Friday data showed the season might be uneven across retailers and shopping centers. Even with Target's traffic on Black Friday up 17%, it has struggled to compete with Walmart, which has snatched more and more of Target's core high-income shoppers. After Target missed its sales and earnings expectations during its last quarter, Target said it expected sales for the fourth quarter to be flat compared with last year and announced it was lowering its financial outlook for the rest of the year.

Macy's, Nordstrom and Kohl's all predicted flat to low single-digit growth for the season in their last earnings reports. But mall operators have pointed to legacy brands like Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch drawing more traffic this year.

Indoor malls saw 6.4% growth year over year for November, including 5% over Thanksgiving weekend and 8.2% on Black Friday itself, according to research firm Placer.ai.

Traffic at both Mall of America, the country's largest indoor mall, and Southdale Center, the country's oldest one, were on the high end of the averages, according to their operators.

What's more, the traffic continued in December, they said.

"We're excited the season has been so strong," said Jennifer Harris, regional vice president of marketing for Simon Property Group, which operates Southdale.

The Edina mall has seen larger than usual crowds into December. The openings of Breitling, Tory Burch and Swarovski stores as Southdale builds out a new luxury wing has helped, she said.

Now, stores are hoping the momentum from the past three weeks will carry into next week, she said.

At Mall of America, each Sunday in December has seen more traffic, said Jill Renslow, chief development and marketing officer for the property.

Dec. 15 was the busiest Sunday of the entire year, in part because of the Minnesota Vikings, she said. The team played the Bears and drew a huge fan contingent from Chicago to the area.

Illinois charges sales tax on apparel and footwear, unlike Minnesota, so the fans had their wallets open, Renslow said.

Yet even if traffic is way up, spending bumps might be more modest, on par with the National Retail Federation's prediction of a 2.5% to 3.5% increase.

"I would say we're on par with predictions," Renslow said.

Retailers are having to discount more items as a way to attract cautious shoppers. But the holiday still is expected to be a decent sales season for retailers, said Tim Quinlan, an economist at Wells Fargo, in a note to clients.

"It's not going to knock anyone's socks off in the wake of record pandemic gains, but continued consumer momentum means it's unlikely to be overly weak either," he wrote.

One oddity of a short holiday season is that several school districts have breaks with a longer-than-usual period after Christmas Day.

Both Mall of America and Southdale are looking forward to more sales during that post-Christmas time, with people using gift cards and taking advantage of mall entertainment and restaurants such as Southdale' new miniature golf venue Puttshack and Mall of America's new CoComelon Playdate indoor playground.

"We'll benefit on the back end," Renslow said.