Shoppers are out in full force across the Bay area for Black Friday.

Actually, men, women and children lined up on Thanksgiving evening to get a head start on one of the biggest shopping days of the year.

And for about the past decade, Black Friday has been considered the official start of the holiday buying season.

Big chains that include Macy's, J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart and Target opened their doors on the holiday for those who wanted to get their post-turkey shop on.

In Wesley Chapel, shoppers were plentiful at the new Tampa Premium Outlets, which opened last month. Meanwhile, early today, crowds were steady but slightly thinner in malls from Clearwater, to Bradenton, to Tampa.

"Actually it was pretty good," said Tampa Premium Outlets shopper Monica Carillo. "It was kind of empty. We did good. We were able to get into all of the stores and not really wait in line. (We) got all the deals."

Mall stores, as well as retailers like Best Buy, still saw shoppers looking for Black Friday deals in person. Crowds lined up at the electronic giant in Tampa and Clearwater Friday morning.

But as retailers increasingly have pushed opening times into Thanksgiving night, and discounting that used to be reserved for Black Friday into early November, analysts have questioned whether Black Friday is losing its cache.

Overall, the National Retail Federation estimates that about 135.8 million consumers will be shopping during the four-day weekend, compared with 133.7 million last year.

The group also expects sales in November and December of this year to be $630.5 billion, up 3.7 percent from the last two months of the year in 2014.