Holiday shopping

ORLANDO, Fla. -- As the holidays approach, shoppers and merchants alike can expect crowded parking lots, long checkout lines, and frayed tempers. One thing most people aren't expecting to run across is counterfeit currency.

But according to the U.S. Secret Service, counterfeiting cases tend to rise around the holidays. And the increase may be even more pronounced this year amid the down economy.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Crowds on Friday lined up at malls and big-box stores for bargain prices on televisions, laptops and hand-held video games. Today, small businesses hope it's their turn.

NEW YORK -- Americans spent more on clothes, shoes, luxury goods and electronics in December than a year earlier, extending retail sales momentum that had been building since August, according to data released Wednesday.

LAYTON — Christmas may be over, but that does not mean that the shoppers have quit buying gifts for the holidays. Thanks to a certain popular gift, crowds of people still have Christmas shopping to do and stores all over the Top of Utah are benefiting.

NEW YORK -- Holiday shoppers are racing to the end of the season at a more feverish pace this year, with retail revenue up 5.5 percent during the last weekend before Christmas.

The figure, released by ShopperTrak on Wednesday, is a drastic improvement from the same weekend last year, when revenue dropped 6.2 percent because a big East Coast snowstorm closed malls and kept shoppers at home.

Don't you just love going out to your neigh-borhood farmers market to purchase local goods and produce? Not only is everything fresh and delicious, you know your picks were lovingly made or harvested by people in your community.

Even though it is wintertime and the fields are frozen until the big thaw, you can still pick a local crop for Christmas -- a musical one.

This year, a veritable cornucopia of styles, with boutique-produced discs and major-label releases to choose from, is available on CD. Talent includes sparkling newcomers and polished journeymen players who have long been honing their craft.