Circuit City and Best Buy launched their "Cyber Monday" specials on Sunday morning. So, one more retail industry milestone event is pre-empted by desperate e-tailers that are struggling to survive, and hoping to capture their share of the 2008 holiday shopping season budget.

One Day Only Cyber Monday Sweepstakes and Specials

There are still many e-commerce sites that are honoring the Cyber Monday tradition with one-day only Cyber Monday deals.

J.C. Penney is staging a "$10,000 Cyber Monday Portrait Giveaway." Visitors to the JCPenney portraits site can enter the sweepstakes for nine hours on Cyber Monday. On Wednesday, 100 of the entrants will be randomly drawn and awarded a $100 portrait gift certificate.

After a Black Friday shooting in one of its stores, the executives at Toys 'R Us probably won't mind at all if a whole lot of toy shopping is done online. The Toysrus.com Cyber-Monday-only deals include discount prices up to 60% off. As an extra bonus, you can get an additional 20% cash back when you use PayPal to pay for your Toys 'R Us purchase.

PayPal has partnered with other retailers to provide these e-commerce cash back bonuses, although there is a curious absence of details on the PayPal website or obvious advertising about it.

Kmart has dozens of designated one-day-only specials listed on its website. Featured Cyber Monday sales include discounts on well-known brands like Martha Stewart, Jaclyn Smith, Joe Boxer, Timex, Levi Strauss, Eureka, and Hoover. (Oh please, Santa, bring me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas!)

There are hints that there will also be new cyber specials on Kmart.com each Monday until Christmas. Pulling out all the holiday stops, Kmart.com is also hosting a Hannah Montana Sweepstakes promotion. Apparently Kmart (and its parent company, Sears) is as interested in grabbing the attention of the tween target market as it is in capturing the baby boomers and senior citizens with its revitalized layaway offering.

More than $10 billion in sales were rung up on Black Friday 2008, according to the mall traffic watching company, ShopperTrak, which is a 3% increase over Black Friday 2007. My personal observation was that there was a full parking lot and a line filled with caffeinated women that snaked around to the back of the building before Kohl's opened at 4 a.m. At the Wal-Mart down the street, the line that seemed to stretch into infinity was so daunting that I chose to get back into my car and drive away before the doors opened at 5 a.m.

This Black Friday turnout defied the dire predictions of most experts. The new concern now is whether the momentum will continue throughout the 2008 holiday shopping season. My personal observation on "Bleak Saturday" was that, so far, there is no momentum.

At the same Kohl's location Saturday morning, when the store's doors were unlocked for the 6 a.m. opening, two people got out of their cars and meandered inside. There was plenty of first-row parking at the J.C. Penney and Macy's entrances when they opened their doors early at 8 a.m. In fact, the only traffic or crowd I found on Bleak Saturday was at the last day of the Mervyn's bankruptcy liquidation sale.

In place of retail momentum in the 2008 holiday shopping season, so far we have retail mayhem. Yesterday a temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled by shoppers who were so desperate for Black Friday bargains that they didn't notice they were stomping on a human being under their feet. I can't remember too many sentences I've hated to type more than that one.

If anything that we sell as retailers or purchase as consumers is more important than life itself, then the global financial crisis is the least of our concerns. No matter how desperate we all feel on both sides of the retail equation right now, I want to believe that as buyers, sellers, Americans, and human beings we all have a better set of values and priorities than this.

It's not like the last truckload of edible food in North America was delivered to the Long Island Wal-Mart on Black Friday before dawn. Someone would have to work hard to convince me that the acquisition of a low-priced plasma television could ever be justified as a life or death matter.

Collectively, it seems that we need to stop and take a breath. We owe at least that much to a 34 year-old man who left his Thanksgiving dinner to go directly to a temporary hourly wage job, and didn’t make it back home alive.

If we're going to do any purchasing on Cyber Monday, it should be to buy ourselves a copy of "It's a Wonderful Life." It might do us all good to pause and realize that we are all starring as George Bailey in our own real-life drama. Like George, we may have lost control of our life as it unravels around us, but also like George, we get to choose whether we curse the broken staircase spindle or kiss it.

Black Friday at the Long Island Wal-Mart shows how we can all deteriorate into the worst kind of residents in Pottersville. Despite whatever possessions we do or don’t have, is this the kind of people we want to be?

The cheerleaders that opened the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade were actually cheery this morning. The song choice was antithetical to the times, since there are not many Americans in the mood to "celebrate good times, c'mon." Nevertheless it was oddly reassuring to see a retail company throw a parade. For a couple of hours of normalcy and nostalgia, we can give thanks to Macy's today.

Best Parade Entertainment Moments

The Fred Hill Briefcase Drill Team was a hoot. If Fred Hill still owned the clothing store that the group was first formed to promote, I would want to shop there just to support their silliness.

The close second hoot of the day was the Greater St. Petersburg Area Awesome Original Second Time Arounders Marching Band. If 85 year-old trombone players and pensioned pompom matrons can march their way onto the world's most famous parade route, could any turnaround be impossible?

Best References to Economic Challenges

Sometimes it's best to give a name to the elephant sitting in the living room, and today the name of the elephant was "retail recession." The ribbon to start the parade wasn't cut until after the official scissors-holder said, "It's been a tough years for America. Don't you think it's time for a parade?" Kudos to Macy's for stating the obvious so that we could all move beyond it and enjoy the festivities.

Most Premature Balloon Appearances

Did anyone else find it odd that the new balloons this year included a Smurf and Buzz Lightyear? I couldn't figure out what was "new" about either one of these characters, or why Disney or Lafig Bengium would be able to justify the "balloon" line item on their fourth quarter profit and loss statement. Okay, it is the 50th Anniversary of the three-apple-tall skipping blue woodland creatures, so that makes that appearance smurfifiable.

However, both of the "new" balloons were plugging films that won't be released until 2010, and that seems oddly premature. Was it that there were no current characters worthy of helium? Or, I had to wonder, was it that there were no new balloon takers so the 2010 movie makers were offered a discount? No matter. There were more balloons this year than last, and most people wouldn't have cared if Superman and Underdog were the "new" characters, as long as there were balloons flying.

In the 40 something years that I've been watching the parade, I don't recall it influencing my holiday shopping. But today, in gratitude to the retailer that staged a feel-good event for millions of people who weren't feeling so good, I printed my "$10 OFF" coupon and set my alarm for 3:00 a.m. I'll be spending money on something at Macy's before the sun rises on Black Friday, and I'll be happy to be making the purchase.

Gratitude, it turns out, is contagious.

Somebody forgot to tell L.L. Bean about the retail industry crisis. With a new store opening, impressive e-retailing results, television advertising, and the launch of their annual Northern Lights celebration, L.L. Bean is employing a business-as-usual strategy that is as oblivious as it is surprisingly successful. While November, 2008 has been a challenge for most U.S. retailers, it’s been a good month for L.L. Bean.

It had to be encouraging to L.L. Bean management to see hundreds of customers standing in line waiting for its newest store to open. Of course, the free gift card bribe offered to the first 500 customers who walked through the doors of the new L.L. Bean store in Pittsburgh was probably the major motivation behind the crowd. But any strategy that successfully gets customers through the front door of a retail store these days is a good strategy. I also have to believe that making those customers stand outside in frigid temperatures before entering a store that sells cold weather gear must have been a brilliantly planned part of the whole strategy.

It was also business as usual at the L.L. Bean annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony this weekend at their flagship store in Freeport, Maine. As is the tradition, one of the largest Christmas trees in Maine is now glowing nightly with thousands of lights without regard to operational expense cutbacks.

There is also no perceptible restraint in the retailer’s annual multi-week holiday celebration schedule. Each weekend from now until New Year's Day customers will be treated to live music, instructional clinics, food tastings, book signings, children’s storybook readings, and holiday demonstrations as part of the L.L. Bean “Northern Lights” celebration. If the combination of customer goodwill, free valet parking, free gift wrapping, and merchandise specials don’t result in sales at this regionally famous retail location, then probably nothing would have.

Outside of the special event hubbub, the e-commerce side of L.L. Bean performed impressively in the first half of November. According to website tracking company Compete Inc., L.L. Bean had the second highest sales conversion rate of all the major e-tailing sites on the internet. A notable 14% of those who ventured onto the L.L. Bean website made a purchase before they left. That’s an enviable conversion percentage for any retailer. If 14% of the people who wander into retail mall stores in the next few weeks make a purchase before they leave, then the holiday season will not be as dismal as everyone anticipates.

What created this web success for L.L. Bean? According to Consumer Reports, it’s the high level of customer satisfaction with quality, descriptions, ordering ease and customer-friendly return policies that make L.L. Bean a web standout. It’s really just basic retailing best practices with impressive virtual execution.

If L.L. Bean continues its strong finish all the way to the end of 2008, it will be a testament to having the bravery to stay the course, despite external conditions that strongly encourage you to do otherwise. In an economy that is anything but ordinary, any retailer that can survive with a business-as-usual strategy is an extraordinary retail business indeed.