In 1939, the nation's largest retailers sent Franklin D. Roosevelt an urgent plea.<br />"It definitely matters so much less than it's mattered in the past," said John J. Canally, chief economic strategist at LPL Research.<br />But contrary to doom-and-gloom predictions this holiday season, dwindling sales for the long Thanksgiving weekend do not necessarily signal a cautious consumer.<br />Overall consumer spending since the beginning of 2014 has risen at a rate of 3 percent after lackluster gains in 2012 and 2013, and most stores rack up decent profits, on an earnings per share basis, during their holiday quarter.<br />The history of Black Friday tracks the history of modern American retailing, and of personal consumption in the United States, which makes up a bigger part of the economy than in almost any other industrialized country.<br />That discounting escalated by leaps and bounds in the dismal years after the housing boom collapsed and Lehman Bros.'s failure ushered in a global financial panic.
