Signs of the holiday season popping up

It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, and I’m already suffering from holiday overload.

I almost didn’t notice it at first due to election stress. But there’s no escaping that we’re already well into our extravagantly lengthy season of making merry.

The signs are everywhere in my hometown of Newport Beach: The Christmas boutique at Roger’s Gardens. The lighting display that I noticed going up at Newport Dunes only a few days after I had stored away my Halloween decor. The complex tinker-toy-like erection of the Christmas tree at Fashion Island. My annual ritual of figuring out which relatives are still speaking to each other.

Whether you share my anxiety or not, allow me to offer some findings, predictions and observations that could influence what kind of holiday season many of us are likely to experience.

As I write, it’s 80-plus degrees in coastal Orange County.

Get used to it, for weather forecasters have been warning us about the increasing likelihood of a hot, dry winter throughout Southern California. That’s bad news when it comes to the drought, as well as for the cozy sweaters I keep longingly gazing upon but may have few opportunities to wear. I might as well forget about velvet altogether.

The folks at Food Network tell us that every Thanksgiving has a trendy dish. In 1996, it was deep-fried turkeys, the network says. Brûléed pumpkin pie was apparently the rage in 2013. Guess I missed that one.

So what will this year’s hot item be? Bon Appetite magazine predicts that this Thanksgiving will be all about craft beers and cider. I have no problem with that.

Our electronic devices are approaching the point of knowing us better than we know ourselves.

I can’t go online these days without constant reminders popping up to tempt me to splurge on those cute sweaters mentioned above. Such savvy marketing works. According to the big financial consulting firm Deloitte, this holiday season will mark a milestone, as shoppers plan on spending an equal amount online as they will on their purchases at traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

The boost in online shopping means that stores will be falling over themselves to promote exceptional customer service and other enticements. Many will have themed events, and special deals and items offered only to in-store customers.

Nonetheless, retail experts predict that we’ll continue to see growing numbers of people who visit physical stores only to “showroom.” That means they’ll show up just to check out products, but then they will search online for the best prices.

Overall holiday spending is expected to show healthy growth.

The National Retail Federation, in its closely followed annual survey, forecasts retail sales in November and December — not including autos, gas and restaurant sales — will increase a higher-than-average 3.6% to $655.8 billion. Some prognosticators are predicting even bigger growth.

It helps when consumers start early, and this year surveys show that many had already begun their Christmas shopping by September.

But there are caveats. A volatile stock market or general economic uncertainty, for example, could dampen consumer enthusiasm. Given such unknowns, some pundits argue that even trying to predict holiday sales is a foolish enterprise.

Now retailers are really messing with us.

First we had Black Friday, the famous day after Thanksgiving that has traditionally been one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Then came Cyber Monday, three days later, during which online merchants try to capture the same magic by offering special one-day deals. In the past few years, Thanksgiving Day store openings became a popular, if controversial, way to try to capture extra sales.

Now some retailers are taking an opposite approach, and have been promoting the fact that they will not open on Thanksgiving. In the most heartwarming language their publicists can muster, they claim to have made these decisions in order to give their customers and workers more family time.

Thank goodness they have our best interests at heart.

But the real reasons for stores opening or not on Thanksgiving are, of course, more complex and driven by the profit motive. The retailers that tend to focus on promotions, such as Best Buy, tend to benefit from the extra hours.

Those that don’t rely on special deals to generate traffic, like Nordstrom, often find that opening on Thanksgiving isn’t worth the expense. That’s because it doesn’t boost sales overall, but simply shifts sales that would otherwise be made on different days.

Old stuff can be cool.

The latest in electronics, housewares, toys and fashion are naturally expected to be big sellers this season. But in a twist, some experts are saying there will also be a healthy demand for certain low-tech items, such as vinyl records, paper products and board games.

And in the biggest contrarian move of all, Amazon is now in the process of rolling out some retail stores. It plans to use these technology-enabled outlets to experiment with new retailing concepts and complement its online business.

Happy Thanksgiving!

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.