“Black Friday” might earn its reputation this year.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, long said to be the busiest shopping day of the year, usually hasn't been the peak shopping day. Instead, the busiest shopping day has been one much closer to Christmas - often the Saturday before Christmas.

In recent years, that's been changing. ShopperTrak, a Chicago-based company that analyzes retailing and forecasts trends in the United States, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia, forecasts that Friday will indeed be the highest-shopping-traffic day of the season this year.

But that doesn't mean it's bound to be a merry season for retailers. The International Council of Shopping Centers, with its headquarters in New York, is forecasting only a 1.7 percent increase in chain-store sales over last year's holiday season. That would be the weakest growth since 2002, when sales rose half a percent, the council reports.

The National Retail Federation is slightly more optimistic. Its holiday-spending forecast calls for a 2.2 percent increase in sales over 2007.

The direst forecast comes from ShopperTrak, the same retail analyst that says Black Friday will be the top shopping day. ShopperTrak predicts that total U.S. foot traffic will decline 9.9 percent during the Christmas shopping season, while retail sales will increase only 0.1 percent over last year.

“Due to numerous factors that retailers can't control, 2008 has been a challenging year, and it seems this pattern will continue throughout the crucial holiday shopping season,” said Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, in a statement released along with the company's shopping forecast.

In Fort Wayne, Chris Ford, marketing manager for Jefferson Pointe, said mall management isn't making any predictions about whether Friday will be the busiest day between now and Christmas.

“We're just certain shoppers are going to do as they've always done - come out on Black Friday to shop at Jefferson Pointe,” he said.

While many of the merchants at Jefferson Pointe are running special promotions for Black Friday, Ford said, the main change mall management makes to accommodate holiday traffic is increasing its security.