"Super Saturday", the Saturday before Christmas that represents the final major day of holiday shopping, usually ranks just behind "Black Friday" as the single-largest holiday sales day.

But amid a tight credit market with banks suffering from the subprime mortgage mess, retailers are having trouble borrowing. Many stores routinely use debt to finance their inventories, but that lifeline is harder to come by and now it's made even worse as consumers cutback on holiday shopping.

Many shoppers have said they are giving fewer gifts and looking only for marked-down merchandise, grim news for retailers who may see their weakest holiday season since the early 1990s.

The National Retail Federation predicted on Friday that two-thirds of Americans still had holiday shopping left to do, while 44.5 million consumers still had not even begun.

The weekend before Christmas typically accounts for some 11.5 percent of holiday sales, according to ShopperTrak, which monitors shoppers at more than 50,000 retail locations.