The holiday shopping season will kick into high gear later this week with Black Friday followed by Cyber Monday on December 2.

Oakland University Marketing Professor Janell Townsend says holiday shopping is starting early every year.

“We’ve run into something that’s now being referred to as Christmas creep, as retailers attempt to capture early shoppers and reduce the pressure that we had on that single day,” Townsend said. “Remember those crushes of people on Friday morning after Thanksgiving. We don’t tend to see those quite anymore like we did in the past.”

If you don’t want to fight the crowds on black Friday, there is also small business Saturday coming up this week.