Once a holiday dedicated to family, football and feasting, Thanksgiving weekend now has at least one added activity: finding the best of technology at the cheapest price. After remembering how the Pilgrim Fathers (and Mothers) prepared the best that the land had to offer into a wonderful meal shared with family and friends and hunted down a wild turkey as the main course, many rise the next day at dawn for their own hunt … or perhaps it is more of a pilgrimage. In fact, before the turkey has been properly digested, "Black Friday" dawns and eager shoppers line up at favorite technology haunts to snare affordable computers, discounted hard drives, deals on hot video game consoles, a steal on the latest GPS system or any of the many potentially phenomenal deals promised in sales circulars.

More recently, another date has been added to the calendar of these veteran shoppers … The Monday after Thanksgiving launches the online holiday shopping season, and “Cyber Monday” joins Turkey Thursday and Black Friday as part of the Thanksgiving festivities. The term was first coined in 2006 as the National Retail Federation (NRF) tried to articulate a new phenomenon. As workers return to their desks after the holiday weekend, these would-be consumers moved their retail foraging to the online environment to find deals on holiday gifts that they couldn’t bag while in their favorite brick-and-mortar retailer the Friday before. Although not yet a household word, this neo-holiday has certainly gained notoriety with many shoppers. For example, CyberMonday.com, a site launched to gather potential online deals for these shoppers, pulled in more than 1.5 million visitors last year.

Clearly, the Internet has become a favorite shopping haunt for holiday consumers. In fact, 44.2 percent of holiday gifts will be bought online and the Internet will influence 33.6 percent of purchases as shoppers rely on the Web to research potential buys, according to a survey by the NRF. More than half of online retailers expect their holiday sales to grow 15 percent over last year, the organization found.

Whether shopping on land or online, let the festivities begin. Happy Thanksgiving!