Ladies and gentlemen, open your wallets.

The holiday shopping season — which until recently kicked off during the wee hours of “Black Friday” morning — starts in earnest today for many retailers who are eager to offer customers an antidote to the tryptophan coma while simultaneously getting a jump on competitors.

The stakes are high: Last year, day-after-Thanksgiving sales rose 6.6 percent to $11.4 billion, according to the Chicago-based research firm ShopperTrak, making it the largest single shopping day of the year. And today and Friday kick off a holiday season that can account for as much as 40 percent of their annual revenue and put them “into the black” for the year — thus the nickname “Black Friday.”

This year, though, several retailers are making it a “gray Thursday” by opening on the holiday itself — some of them in the evening, others even earlier. Toys R Us, Kmart, Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, Old Navy and Gander Mountain are just a few of the retailers that have backed up their opening times into Thanksgiving, with several large shopping malls and many more retailers opening at the stroke of midnight tonight.

Opening earlier on Friday and even on Thanksgiving itself may benefit shoppers in a number of ways, according to Ashley Martin, spokeswoman for Bridgewater Falls Lifestyle Shopping Center in Fairfield Twp.

“With the way they have their specials staggered out … that’s definitely going to spread out the traffic some more and it will help to keep people there longer and give people the opportunity to go around each different store for the specials they’re trying to get versus one big rush at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. or whatever time most stores would normally open.”

For those who aren’t committed enough to turn out overnight for doorbuster deals, bargains can still be had in the early hours of Friday around 8 a.m., as the earlier crowds start to dissipate, Martin said.

“You never know what’s going to be the hot item that’s going to go quickly, but we’ve got Target, Best Buy, Old Navy and others who will have good deals all throughout the day.”

The After-Thanksgiving Weekend Sale at Cincinnati Premium Outlets in Monroe offers holiday savings and extended shopping hours. Eighty-two businesses open at 9, 10 or 11 p.m., while the remaining 18 businesses open at midnight right after Thanksgiving.

Early openings are a direct result of shopper demand, according to Lewis Taulbee, the center’s general manager.

“This will be our fourth year hosting Midnight Madness,” Taulbee said. “Each year shoppers show up earlier and earlier, so for the second year in a row we will have stores opening at 9 p.m. Thursday night to serve the shoppers who come extra early and want to be the first to take advantage of the deals.”

For some, the trend of retailers moving toward Thanksgiving Day openings represents a greed-fueled encroachment on the family time that accompanies Thanksgiving celebrations. A handful of online petitions have been launched calling upon retailers to back off their Thanksgiving Day openings to allow employees to spend the entire day with their families, but no retailers have adjusted their previously announced hours as a result of such pressure. And on social media sites such as Facebook, some shoppers have embraced the early sales as a great excuse to get off the couch and enjoy a little family bonding time while searching out bargains.

The CEO of J.C. Penney, which will open at a comparatively late 6 a.m. Friday, took a shot at some of his competitors’ early opening times in an email to customers late Tuesday.

“I know that some retailers are opening on Thanksgiving this year. But spending Thanksgiving with family is one of America’s greatest traditions,” CEO Ron Johnson wrote. “Since jcp was founded on the Golden Rule, I’m proud to honor this tradition by keeping our stores closed on this special day.”

Other retailers say their customers have embraced the earlier opening times. Toys R Us will open at 8 p.m. tonight, an hour earlier than last year, after finding that customer response to last year’s Thanksgiving hours was overwhelmingly positive, according to company spokeswoman Adrienne O’Hara.

“Many people brought their kids and turned it into a family event,” O’Hara said. “And they avoided having to wait in long lines outside during the early morning hours.”

The first 200 people in line at every Toys R Us store will receive a “goodie bag” of stocking stuffers and snacks valued at about $30, O’Hara said. Once inside, they’ll have first crack at 200 “door-buster” specials.

Several of the early-opening retailers are staggering their door-buster specials, offering one set of deals when they first open their doors, and a second and in some cases third wave of specials with later start times Friday morning and afternoon.

For those who are traveling tonight, and those who just make a small dent in their holiday shopping this long weekend, “Cyber Monday” is just around the corner, and several retailers that sell online are starting their promotions over the holiday weekend and extending them through Monday. Shop.org and the National Retail Foundation say that online retailers are poised to unveil some tasty promotions on Monday, with four in 10 retailers offering free shipping without conditions that day.

Shop.org’s eHoliday survey shows that a record 85 percent of retailers with a presence online will offer special promotions on Cyber Monday, up from 78.4 percent last year.

And even those who shop at work may find it easier to do so this year. In a recent survey by staffing firm Robert Half Technology, a scant 33 percent of chief information officers interviewed said their companies block access to online shopping sites, down from 60 percent last year.

As many as 147 million people plan to shop Black Friday weekend, a marginal decrease from the 152 million who planned to do so in 2011, According to a preliminary Black Friday shopping survey.

Ohio retail receipts are predicted to climb by 4.2 percent this month and next, according to Focus on Ohio’s Future, the research branch of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants, which released its annual holiday sales forecast on Monday.

That’s a bit better than the majority of predictions for sales in stores nationwide.

The study was conducted with the University of Cincinnati’s Economics Center.