The holiday shopping season is officially here, and from the lines at local retailers Thursday night and Friday morning, shoppers were happy with the sales they were finding during the annual Black Friday, after Thanksgiving sales.

Sales events started at 8 p.m. at Walmart and continued throughout the evening and into Friday morning.

Ken and Austin Lawson of Dawsonville were among the thousands of shoppers waiting to cash in on the advertised deals Thursday night, just hours after celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with family.

"My wife wanted a fire pit for the back porch and we were here for the portable DVD players for the car," said Ken Lawson, during his first Black Friday shopping experience.

"I had heard about it, but this has been an eye opener and experience. You actually meet good people out here, trying to save a little bit of money in this economy," he said.

Young mother Miranda Pruitt called the crowds and excitement of Black Friday "craziness," but admitted the sales she was finding made dealing with the crowds worth it.

"It is pretty crazy, but I think it's fun," Pruitt said. "It's a good time, because you can get stuff that you might not be able to afford otherwise for your kids at Christmas - stuff that might have been a little bit too expensive before. When it's on sale, it's a lot easier to get."

At North Georgia Premium Outlets' annual Midnight Madness shopping event, the crowds began lining up as early as 6 p.m. Thanksgiving night in anticipation of additional savings on the already reduced outlet prices.

With the promise of 30 percent off and an additional 10 percent for the earliest shoppers, sisters Kristina and Tiffany Grimes were first in line at the Coach Outlet, in front of a crowd of nearly 300 waiting to shop at the popular, designer handbag store.

"I'm in it for a purse for myself, and our parents live in Alaska and they don't have a Coach there, so we're buying our mom a purse," Kristina Grimes said.

According to a report by the National Retail Federation, an estimated 147 million people will shop either at stores or online during the Black Friday weekend, which draws its name from an accounting term that indicates retailers have made a profit, or are "in the black."