BANGOR – The hottest items during the day-after-Thanksgiving sales were shopping carts. Bargain hunters were using them all shortly after stores opened Friday, some as early as 5 a.m.

“I ran into the nicest lady in Kmart. She shared her cart with me,” said Zita Osgood of Holden. “She was from Halifax and we had to wait in line for 30 to 35 minutes, and we talked the whole time. It was nice.”

For most of the year, a telltale sign of how exactly the economy was doing was seen in the shopping cart corrals at the area’s biggest retailers. Even on Saturdays, the biggest shopping day of any given week, carts still were available.

On Friday morning, however, they were in use and in demand. People were even bringing them into the stores from the packed parking lots. They were needed to carry the many bargains retailers were advertising as a lure to get shoppers to their facilities.

At Wal-Mart in Bangor, one woman thought she would be able to get a cart as she walked past the store’s greeter toward the corral. She stopped in her tracks.

“No carts? Holy cow! Look at all the people!” she exclaimed, and began to hurry by and into the crowd.

If the unavailability of shopping carts is any indication, area consumers are doing the exact opposite of what national economists and retail sales analysts forecasted for this holiday season. They are shopping.

“I normally don’t go this early,” said Angie Landry of Old Town. “But I felt I needed to help the economy.”

For weeks, the pundits have said that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 have changed consumers’ attitudes about the holiday. Shoppers will be spending less, and what they do buy will have a sentimental value attached to it. This season, more so than those in past years, will be about tradition and family and friends, they said.

And in a way they didn’t expect, the analysts were right. Going to the stores Friday morning after Thanksgiving is a tradition for many families and friends.

For seven years, Julie Monk and Sandra Cookson, both of Glenburn, have been getting up early the Friday after Thanksgiving and going shopping. They brought along Heidi Pace of Hermon, who never had been an early-bird shopper.

This year, the friends didn’t plan for what they would buy.

“We always look at sales in the newspaper,” Cookson said. “But this year we’re shopping without a list. This year, we’re enjoying the spirit of it all.”

Donna Adams of Campobello Island in New Brunswick said she often spends the day after Thanksgiving at the stores with her four daughters. Sitting on a bench at the Bangor Mall, she said this year has been difficult for her family, but their hardships or even the terrorist attacks won’t stop them from experiencing their annual shopping trek.

“It’s not been a good year moneywise for all of us”, but it’s fun to do the traditional things,” Adams said. “I have been touched very much by Sept. 11. You realize your world has changed. I think the traditions of your family, your friends draws you in. You want to be close.”

Retailers are noticing that families are in the forefront of consumers’ minds. And the fact that people are actually shopping has surprised them. Sales are either comparable or slightly above last year’s marks, according to several store managers. One manager said he didn’t expect that much business until closer to Christmas.

Wal-Mart manager Jose Vega said “it’s just incredible” the number of people buying items that would be used by the whole family, such as board games, televisions and DVD players.

“I believe people are nesting more,” Vega said.

Bangor Mall manager Bruce Soper said he’s noticed the same thing.

“There’s going to be a lot less traveling going on,” he said. “So people are going to be spending their money on things to do at home.”

But while some people aren’t traveling, others are finding bargains on airfares. Maina Fernald of Bangor said plane tickets are cheap this year, and now her stepchildren in Detroit, Mich., can spend Christmas in Bangor.

“That’s different for us,” she said, anxious about their arrival later this month. “We don’t get to see them that often.”

Children are demonstrating the true meaning of the holiday season, according to some shoppers.

“The kids are not asking for a lot this year,” said MaryAnn Bragan of Milo, who with her husband, Raymond, was looking for presents for their grandchildren at the Bangor Mall. “They just want to be together.”

The Rev. Bob Carlson of East Orrington Congregational Church, who was at Bangor Mall on Friday, said he’s noticed this year “more of a focus on what the holiday was intended to be instead of the commercialism.”

People, he said, want to express “the spirit of love, which is the gift of Christmas.”

For many, that is demonstrated with a store-bought present. Especially a gift for a child.

Donny Elston, store manager for Toys ‘R’ Us, on Friday was busy moving shopping carts from the register area back to the front door for arriving customers to use. He said he hadn’t expected as many shoppers as those who actually walked through the front doors. No exact number was available.

But he said he could understand why they were there. It was that strong sense of family that brought them in.

“In the 12 years that I’ve been doing this, even in wartime, people buy for their children,” he said.